Escaping from
YouTube to a television near you, a host of shows now delight in everything from spot-popping to earwax removal, providing unexpected thrills for viewers
As a child, the concept of horror films perplexed me. What kind of person willingly gives themselves sleepless nights – and would go as far as paying to be frightened? As I have got older, I have come to look at
Friends who put themselves through such films with the kind of bewilderment and acquiescence I imagine a parent has when their child triumphantly announces they are learning the keytar.
It is with the same wide-eyed confusion that I have watched the rise of “gross-out videos”, a content strand that has made its way from the internet to TV. For years, there have been corners of YouTube where you can be disgusted and titillated by a breed of heinous videos: excretions of oozing sebaceous cysts, extractions of exploding whiteheads and blackheads, the removal of ingrown hair and toenails.