Dr. Pimple Popper went back to her roots for a new viral video that grosses out some viewers and delights others.
Dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee shared a video on social media on Monday of her best blackhead removals using a small, simple compression tool. While she picked and squeezed several blackheads, Louis Tomlinson and Bebe Rexha’s “Back to You” teasingly played in the background.
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“I’ll always come #backtoyou blackheads,” she wrote alongside the mildly grotesque montage.
Fans who dared to watch the clip found Dr. Lee’s work to be fascinating and took to the comments to share their reactions.
“That looks cool!” one follower wrote. Another added, “This one is my fav.”
“Everytime one comes out I feel relieved,” another awe-stricken follower wrote, adding, “like it’s my face.”
Dr. Lee’s videos have become among the most popular content on the internet, which she compares to the popularity of pornography.
“People were watching under a closet, almost like it was porn, and people are now embracing it,” she told the Daily Mail of the changing view of her profession and videos. “It’s become less guilty. People were hiding this issue, but now they are announcing it to the world, they are proud of it.”
She continued, “They’ve found other people who have this same joy and they appreciate that and now they know they are normal. It’s absolutely mind-boggling to me.”
The success of the videos, both on YouTube and social media, has brought her biggest fans, known as popoholics, “out of the closet.”
“I happened upon this fascinating phenomenon,” Lee revealed. “I didn’t know people enjoyed watching these videos and relaxed to them.”
Lee said she has heard of people who fall asleep to her videos. She thinks her calming voice helps put people with the skin picking disorder dermatillomania to sleep. “Patients don’t take sleeping pills any more,” she added.
Lee will soon expand her squad of popoholics as she recently landed a reality television series with TLC. The upcoming show will feature a variety of unique dermatology cases like the ones in her viral videos, though the network has not confirmed when the series will begin.
The California dermatologist began filming her various procedures for Instagram in 2014 before she migrated to YouTube. Her most-watched video shows her removing a blackhead from an 85-year-old patient; it has over 38 million views. As she has gained more followers, her work has become more graphic, culminating with a video shot earlier in March which shows her removing a cyst perilously close to a man’s Adam’s Apple.
While Lee compared the draw of her videos to that of NSFW videos, she also suspected viewers find a thrill akin to other adrenaline-boosting feats when watching her pimple-popping scenes.
“I also think it may give some people a little rush… similar to what a person may feel from riding a roller coaster or watching a scary movie,” Lee told LADBible of her popular videos. “And I think it’s fascinating for many people to see what can come out of the skin of a regular, normal, healthy human.”
