When Strangers Diagnose You Online
On platforms like Reddit, people are seeking opinions on anything from skin conditions to syphilis
From Baltimore to Beverly Hills, cases of the most commonly reported STDs have reached an all-time high. And in bathrooms and bedrooms across America, people are responding by dropping their pants, sliding a smartphone down there, and uploading photos of their private parts to the internet.
“Is this herpes?” asked one user on Reddit’s STD forum, including a photo of a rash on her bikini line.
“Just want to know what this is,” pled another, alongside several close-up photos of small bumps on and around his penis and scrotum.
Welcome to the world of online crowd-diagnosing, where communities like r/STD are attracting growing numbers of people seeking opinions on anything from skin conditions to potential syphilis from anonymous strangers on the internet.
According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, online crowd-diagnosis is trending. The number of monthly posts to r/STD doubled in just the past year; more than half of those posts asked the community for a diagnosis, and of those, a third included a photo. And it’s not just happening for STDs: People have long used social media to ask for…
