The influencers normalizing Tourette's Syndrome on TikTok

Within disability TikTok, those with Tourette’s syndrome—and specifically coprolalia—occupy a prominent place. The disorder is visually and aurally distinctive, and lends itself to being documented on video. Zara Beth, a 16-year-old from northwest England who uses her first and middle names online, went viral last year with a clip of her body repeatedly recoiling from a COVID-19 swab. Though she has had tics since the age of 7, she told me she was not diagnosed until after the COVID-19 shutdowns began. (She believes that the stress of the pandemic plus exams made her condition worse.) On TikTok, she quickly found a network of others with the condition, and built up a fan base of 1.7 million followers. Soon, she realized that she wouldn’t have to tell her classmates about her condition when her school reopened. They had all seen her videos.

Cooney joined TikTok last year after he brought his young sons their evening meal and, just before he could give it to them, threw it over his head, shouting, “Fries to go!” His older son Daniel, with the digital shrewdness of a 9-year-old, said that this kind of thing would make great viral content. Daniel was right: The videos of Cooney cooking with his kids are regularly his most popular. The one where he bakes a trifle, an improbable British dessert featuring jelly, custard, and cream—you can already see the danger—features Cooney singing Beyoncé lyrics and hitting himself in the face with a spatula. It has 11.7 million views.