Knock Knock Eye: Should the Renaissance Fair Host a Bloodletting Blood Drive?
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Hey everybody, welcome to Knock Knock Eye with me, your host, Dr. Glockenflecken. This might be the only time some of you will ever see an ophthalmologist. It's not in person, but it's close enough. Thank you for joining me to learn a little thing about eyeballs. A thing or two about eyeballs, maybe three or four things. But this is your one-stop shop for all things eye care.

I've got some interesting things to share with you today. It has to do with medieval ophthalmology and how it relates, how time is a flat circle and what was old is once new again, and how the quackery of different specialties that you find in different specialties just

comes back around eventually and re-enters society. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that later. If that wasn't clear enough for you all, I feel like I just explained that very poorly. But anyway, we'll get into some medieval ophthalmology here. But first, I thought we could jump into some Q&A. First, just kick it off with a few of the comments that are on the YouTube channel, at Glockenfleckens.

The most recent episode that was posted was where I talked about consulting ophthalmology, did a little bit of a survival guide.

During that episode, I also talked about Lady Glockenflecken burning the hell out of her hand. She's doing great, you guys. So just again, quick recap. She just grabbed a little kid-sized ATV that was a thousand degrees by the muffler and pulled it off of her and saved, not saved her life, but she

She would have if it was a dangerous thing. The kid was okay. But in the aftermath of it was that Kristen burned her entire palm almost. And now she's got a nice, her palm is peeling off and she's got this beautiful skin underneath the palm. The human body is amazing. It's just unbelievable. There was no scarring or anything. So she'll be just fine. She's doing okay.

We can kind of laugh about it now, but in the moment, I have never seen someone in that much pain. Even when she gave birth, I don't know if that was quite at the level of burning the entire palm of your hand. That's, and she would tell you that too. It's like that. She was writhing in pain, but doing just fine. So thank you all who expressed kind thoughts and words to her on our channel. I really appreciate that. She's doing great.

Okay, so a couple of great comments, though, about that. So, at TankGuyV3 said, did the dermatologist come in after hours to examine the burn? Assuming you went with her, there would have been a dermatologist and an ophthalmologist in the ER after hours.

Definitely a lottery ticket night if that was the case. No, unfortunately, that would have been awesome and probably would have been taking a lot of pictures with a lot of people if that had happened. But no, the burn was not severe enough.

We had a very capable emergency physician that was able to handle everything just fine. So, God, man, I would love to see that happen, though. It's only happened once that I was a part of.

And that was a Stevens-Johnson's case where, you know, obviously severe burns and burns to the eyes as well. I mean, burns, the skin's kind of sloughing off this hypersensitivity reaction that you get with Stevens-Johnson's syndrome. And so that was the only case. That was the only time. And it probably was a big deal for everyone involved because, yeah, that is...

That is unlikely to ever happen. That is a lottery ticket event. Like you go, you just feel the luck wash over you whenever you are witness to something as special as an ophthalmologist and a dermatologist. Skin and eyes in the same place, much less the emergency department.

That doesn't happen very often. Okay. At nursing numbers, this was a great point because part of what I talked about was, you know, we went to our local community hospital and then I made some remark, I'm sure, about, you know, outside hospital. How now, as an ophthalmologist out in my community, I'm officially outside ophthalmologist. And the bias that there is from academics to doctors

small community hospitals and people that work in those hospitals. And at nursing numbers, I made a good point, said part of the reason people feel so negative about outside hospital is that we forget that we only see the cases they, we being academics, like big medical centers, only see the cases that outside hospital is not equipped to handle. We forget how many routine cases they take care of.

and how they're capable of getting the patient to us. This is coming from a former PEDS specialty ICU nurse. That is a great point, right? It's like for all like the, the patients that are sent to the big medical center, there's dozens that are not sent that are able to be taken care of appropriately by those smaller hospitals. So yeah, great point. Thank you for that nursing numbers. Uh, let's see what else? Um,

Oh, this is great. I mentioned in my consulting ophthalmology breakdown, I talked about double vision diplopia. That's one of the big things that scares people. It also scares me as an ophthalmologist, not because I can't handle it, but because it takes a lot of time and mental energy. And it's hard to do that in the middle of the night. Not that I usually have to do it in the middle of the night, but I like to, after five o'clock, I don't know about you guys, I like to turn my brain off.

Some people like my wife, Lady Glockenflecken, she like the way she react, uh, sorry, the way she relaxes after like a day of work is by like learning more things. I don't know how are any of you like that? Like she will listen to podcasts.

that like are about like social media marketing because she runs glockenspiel like it's like her full-time job and she's incredibly busy doing it because she's also writing a book and a thousand other things um but uh so she like she the way she like decompresses is by like learning things i don't i don't i'm not wired that way like when i was done with my board exam i

for my ophthalmology boards, I was excited because that meant that I didn't have to learn anything like ever again if I don't want to. I had just spent 15 years like just head down learning constantly. I could not stop learning. I was not allowed to stop learning. And finally, once in my life with no testing on the horizon, I got to just like turn my brain off.

And I love it. It's great. I come home after a day of using my brain and I was like, I don't want to use my brain anymore.

and i don't sometimes and it's it's fantastic i could just like i could just stare at a wall and just nothing in my brain and it's it feels good it feels relaxing i love it my wife is not that way she's like listening to podcasts and reading things and and having intellectual discussions with our 13 year old who's wired exactly the same way as her uh and um

Me and me and the little one, we're, we're, we're more on the same wavelength. We will, we both like to just kind of just be dumb and silly. It's great. I love it. So I don't know. I don't know. Maybe that just tells you a little bit about my intellect, but anyway, so getting back to the diplopia issue, I don't know how I got off of that tangent.

So I talked about in my consulting ophthalmology, I talked about diplopia and what to do, how to evaluate it as a non-ophthalmologist. And the biggest point I made was to determine if double vision is binocular or monocular. And to do that, you ask the patient, okay, when you cover an eye,

One eye, doesn't matter which eye it is, when you cover the eye, does the double vision go away? If it always goes away, then you have binocular diplopia. If the patient covers an eye,

and the diplopia, the double vision is still there, then it's monocular diplopia. And that is most likely going to be like dry eye type symptoms, like fluctuating double vision. Binocular diplopia, that's like a brain thing. That's all the serious things, right? Like cranial nerve palsies, intracranial aneurysms causing cranial nerve palsies, strokes, things like that.

So I got a comment at JMVH70C said, always confused when you talk about diplopia. Welcome to the club. Sometimes I confuse myself talking about diplopia. But this person goes on to say I had strabismus as a kid. Again, strabismus is misalignment to the eyes as a kid with three surgeries. Very common kid problem. Lots of surgery gets done.

I never learned to focus the eyes together. I alternate, which is a thing. You can alternate your fixation. When I have double vision with one eye, I get it that it is mostly dry eye, but can't some of my double vision also be binocular at the same time as being monocular? That's a really good point. I would say in this case, when you have alternating fixation,

You're so good at being able to just have one eye focus and kind of ignore the other eye that you're less likely going to have binocular vision, sorry, binocular diplopia. But you can have both binocular and monocular diplopia because patients don't just exist in one bucket.

right? They can have different things. They can, you know, dry eye is one of the most common things that I see in the eye clinic. So a patient could have dry eye, but maybe they also had a stroke and or a sixth nerve palsy. Maybe they have high intracranial pressure. Let's put pressure on your abducens nerve because there's a really long track to that nerve that causes double vision. That nerve goes right by your, your

like your aqueduct, or I forgot what that structure is called. But anyway, high intracranial pressure can cause damage or pressure on that nerve, causing you a sixth nerve palsy. Well, you can have both of those things at the same time because the dry eye thing is incredibly common.

I'd say most people over 50 have some degree of dry eye. And then you get the second thing, right? So usually we like to think of one thing that causes all the patient's concerns. All right. But occasionally you can have common things being common. And so that's when your physical exam really can kick in. Because by history, someone, you can have a clinical picture where the patient's like, well, yeah, it gets better when I cover an eye.

Okay, that sounds like binocular diplopia. The eyes are not aligned properly. But that same patient could be like, well, it gets better, but I still have it. Okay, maybe there's also some monocular diplopia.

diplopia there. So it can be a little bit of a cloudy picture. That's when you do your exam. You do a cross cover exam. You check one eye and then go straight to the other eye and you look for movement of the eyes. You look for like a realignment of the uncovered eye, of the covered eye once it becomes uncovered.

So if you have a totally normal alignment, you should see very little, if any, movement of the eyes. As they fixate on a target in the distance and you're moving, you're covering one eye, then the other, doing what we call a cross-cover test. You should not see those eyes deviate because the eyes are working together really well. But if you have binocular diplopia,

Then the eye will shift because one eye is not looking at the target. And so it has to re fixate on the target. And so, you know, you can get a lot from history, but sometimes that's not enough and it's still a little bit murky. And then you rely on your physical exam to get you the rest of the way.

and to try to really uncover what is going on is it monocular is it binocular and what you really want to be able to do as a clinician when you're have a patient with double vision in front of you you want to rule out the binocular diplopia like monocular that's not that's not that's not an emergency monocular diplopia is not dry eye is not an emergency all right but some of the other things that cause binocular diplopia

it can be an emergency all right so so that's really where you need to focus and being able to diagnose is there a true ocular misalignment so thank you for that love a good excuse to talk more diplopia appreciate it um no really honestly that's uh it's a hard subject it took it

It took a long time for me to really wrap my head around how the eyes move together. And that's why pediatric ophthalmology is so challenging to learn. And once you get it down, like you kind of, the way you're, you just kind of train your brain to like,

think as a pediatric ophthalmologist, I think in terms of strabismus and the muscles that are pulling the eye in different directions, it's, it feels like a different way of thinking and it's hard. It is so hard. Um, all the, all the props to the pediatric ophthalmologists on there on the, uh, out there because, uh, uh, you guys are awesome. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back with some medieval ophthalmology.

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All right, folks. Um, so let me tell you, cause I'm not an historian, right? Um, but I did recently go to the, uh, the, um, Renaissance fair here in Oregon, which was a great time. Uh, we talked about it a little bit on an upcoming, uh, um, knock, knock, uh, I sorry, knock, knock high episode, uh, because I went with the family. And so, uh, Kristen and I chat about it, but, um,

It got me thinking about medieval eye stuff. And so I was like, okay, because there wasn't a lot of, I talk about this, there wasn't a lot of medical related. There's probably all kinds of liability issues with that. But I thought there could have been a big medieval medicine tent

where you go and you can get your concoctions and, and, you know, but the problem though with medieval medicine is that it doesn't work and it's like actively dangerous. So you can't like, although it would be super cool and awesome to be able to go in and like, people are like getting leeches put on themselves. I would never do that, but I mean, it would really add to the authenticity of Ren fair. That's, that's what I'm saying. Uh,

You have people in plague doctor masks, although they only wore that because of the bubonic plague.

And I don't think you want, you don't want to bring in actual pathogens into the, into the equation here, but things like, you know, bloodletting. Sure. Let's get it. Uh, I, I made a point that I think it'd be a really great idea to do a blood drive at the Renaissance fair. Uh, you call it bloodletting. You have people in the costumes that are taking your blood, but it's really just a blood drive, but you pretend that you're doing bloodletting to like treat infection or treat a, um, whatever it is that bloodletting treated. Yeah.

I think these treatments are just like catch-all for catch-all ailments, like anything, like whatever you have. If you have something wrong with your humors, not talking about vitreous or aqueous, those are real humors, the four humors, then bloodletting or removing the bad blood can help, I guess. Anyway, so I went down a little rabbit hole. I started like, what were some of the...

the, uh, the medieval or Renaissance era, um, eyeball things that people did. And man, there is a lot out there. So I thought I'd just go through some of these. It's kind of interesting. And what I find to be interesting is that you'll notice there's, there's a lot of through lines from medieval treatment of things.

and some of the nonsense, misinformation, quackery that we still see today in the year 2025. All right, I'm going to talk about some of those things. So first, I came across this thing called Bald's Eye Salve. It's an ointment, a homemade ointment, that contains equal parts garlic that you crush with a mortar and pestle,

Uh, also you get some leeks or onions in there, some like root vegetable stuff. Um, and then also, um, a little bit of wine and some ox gall, which I didn't know what that was. I had to look it up. It's bile. It's, it's cow. It's bovine bile. Everyone, you get it right from the gallbladder of the cow at

My question is, and I don't know if this is even answerable. It's like, how do people know? Like, what do people think is like, they just, they're trying to come up with something that treats something like, man, let's, I don't know what's in this organ inside this cow. They're like butchering a cow to come up with this. Wow. There's some kind of fluid in here. Let's put it in our eyes and see if it works. I don't know that I would love to know like the thought process.

Maybe AI will get there someday and we can find out. I don't know. Anyway, how these things came together to form Bald's ISAV. So I don't know who Bald was, but this is a recipe that was from a 10th century Anglo-Saxon medical text. It's written in Old English and it's in the British Library in England, I think. And so this was...

uh, used most likely historians think as a salve to try to, to treat styes. So styes, as we all know, Chalazion is the, is a technical term, a more specific term, um, is when you have a blocked meibomian gland in the eyelid that causes a big swelling in the eyelid. And, uh,

It can be caused usually, well, what causes is you have a plugged up, that plugged up gland, just the oil just builds up and it has nowhere to go. And so it incites inflammation and causes this big red angry bump. Your normal natural bacteria can cause some like staph, normal, you know, staph epidermitis. It can, if you have an overgrowth of staph, it can kind of precipitate that, but we don't typically have to treat this with antibiotics.

But this was supposed to be intended as this antimicrobial thing. And, you know, obviously it's not necessary. But even to this day, you still have not this particular mixture. I don't think anybody's putting like cow bile into a drop or ointment and trying to sell it. But you do have lots of, you can find these at the pharmacy, homeopathic stye medications.

that are basically just, it's like, I'm not sure exactly what's in it, but it's just some kind of antiseptics, over-the-counter antiseptic type stuff, like triple ointment that you can find for skin. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. That's the point. Because styes, honestly, they will eventually...

go away on their own. All right. Sometimes we have to give them some steroid to quiet down the inflammation, but they, the vast majority of these dyes will resolve on their own. We just say hot, hot packet, do hot packs, you know, put a little pressure on the bump. Eventually the gland will open up.

So anyway, I learned about bald eye salve. That was a good one. Um, but man, then I, I went, I went even further. That was the first one that came up. Uh, the, the idea of these, there's lots of, of history of, of salves and like the going back to like the 1700s, 1800, not, not as far back as the, as like the middle ages. But, uh, you see a lot of, um, there's this thing called Dr. Thompson's eye water, uh,

Like a lot of people would create these, these, um, uh, bottles of, of water, just basically what normal water, rose water. Uh, sometimes they had a little alcohol in them and a lot of them had morphine or opium.

And so, and as, as we all know, the eye is a mucous membrane. And so it will absorb this stuff and it gets you high. And, um, and so people would, you know, use this on their eyes and it would, um, it would alter their brain chemistry a little bit. Uh, but one of my favorite things that I found is.

is, um, and the thing is like, you still, God, there's, there's a lot of what's the, there's a homeopathic thing that you simulacin. That's it. Simulacin. Like some of the ingredients I'm seeing on these, these eye salves, these eye water concoctions from the 1800s and 1700s, some of these ingredients, like you'll find in

exceedingly low quality quantities like on the order of like 0.0003% you'll find these additives in like similacin eye drops which are quote homeopathic but it's in such small amounts that it's essentially

um it's essentially tap water that's it's all it is tap water that's what you're putting it even worse though it's unregulated it's unregulated tap water like the fda doesn't do and have anything to do with these types of homeopathic remedies and the reason they can skirt around that is because the things they're using are in such low quantities so they don't they can kind of fall underneath the the purview of the fda

So anyway, lots of overlap with what was old is new again, I guess. Um, and so, but then I wanted to talk about the, uh, um, this was, this was something I actually did. I was not aware of. Um, so they're called eye cups, right?

or these, I guess you call them eyeballs, but no, they're eye massagers. These commercial eye massagers. And I found this website, izm.us, which is, I've never seen this before, has all these examples of these different type of eye massagers that were made over the past 200 years. And they all claim to cure any kind of eye ailment from cataracts to

to asthenopia, which is like eye strain. Epiphora, so tearing of the eyes. Just the quality of your vision. Presbyopia. And these eye massagers, some of them are just rubber balls that you just rub on your cornea that changes the shape of your cornea. And a lot of the advertisements for these devices are

They claim to get you out of glasses. And that's what I was talking about at the beginning, this whole idea of like, you would think that 200 years ago, we wouldn't still be endorsing some of the same quackery that we do today.

Um, but, but all of this stuff still exists. I've talked about it on this podcast. You still have these quote unquote influencers that are out there trying to claim that they have a method for getting you out of glasses. In this case, these eye massagers, what I suspect is that what they do is, you know, we, we know that eye rubbing can change the shape of your cornea.

We have contact lenses that can change the shape of your cornea as a treatment for myopia. And so probably what these eye massagers do is they rub the surface of the eye so hard that it changes the shape of your cornea and can cause people who are really nearsighted to become a little bit less nearsighted in the short term.

And so you could see how people would be like, they can, they rub the heck out of their eye, change the flatten the cornea a little bit because they're pushing on it so much causing them to all of a sudden, Oh, they can see a little bit better for like a couple hours in the distance. So they keep rubbing their eye.

Eventually they just get this ectasia of their cornea. Basically they induce keratoconus, which is an instability of your cornea that causes you to, can you can have perforations of your cornea. You can have just a dramatic decrease, decline in vision over time. Um, so obviously it's a bad thing, but I suspect that some of these eye massagers, that's the effect they were getting.

There's all kinds of stuff. All these ideal sight restorers, radioactive eye applicator. So this is an eye massager that's made of radium. So not only are you rubbing your eye to death, but you're also irradiating it. How about that? There's things you can plug in or things that you can just bathe the eye in some kind of vapors. You probably like essential oils.

But my favorite one here was the Actina vaporizer from 1886. So this is a device that claimed to cure blindness and deafness. You inhale the substances inside this little cylinder and then apply it also to your eye.

So it comes with a thing. You can inhale it through your nose, like inhale it through your nostrils. And you also just put it on your eye, just bathe the eye and the vapors and the ingredients inside the cylinder were like mustard oil, sassafras oil, belladonna, which will dilate your eye. And the claims for this thing were so outrageous that it was part of the, the catalyst for creating the FDA. Yeah.

So I think, uh, the eyeball quackery had a role in, in creating what we know of as the, the FDA today. So, um, I don't know. It's, it's wild. You'd go back and it's just, it's, it's, it's at equal parts fascinating and just kind of depressing, right? Because man, we're still fighting this stuff.

Like the, the, it's, it's really, it's so frustrating, especially just the, the, the claims that to be able to take a course, we will teach you enough that you, these eye exercises, there's things in here about eye exercises, going back a book on it, better eyesight without glasses, WH Bates.

These are published a hundred years ago and, uh, and we're still dealing with this nonsense. Obviously iridology reading the pigmentation patterns of the iris. I talked about this a few episodes ago when I did a deep dive on the iris. So, um, anyway, I, if any of you are, are like kind of experts or know a lot about, um, about kind of medieval or, or, or some of the, I want to see other examples of this where, uh,

they're they're clearly you know quackery that was being offered to people like in the 1800s that we're still doing today we still haven't figured out how to just get rid of all of this uh so i want to know other examples you guys might be aware of um all right that's that's all i got on the on this type of nonsense all right let's take a break we'll come back with one more thing

So, Will. Yeah. You're always teaching me things about demodex mites, your little friends there. Let's switch things up a bit. Okay. How about I ask you a couple questions to see how much you really know? Go for it. Okay. Let's do it. What are the only two main species of demodex mites found in humans? Oh.

Type 1 and type 2? Hmm, got you on that one. Demodex follicularum, which are found in the eyelash follicles, and demodex brevis, which are found in the meibomian glands. Impressive. All right, next question. Why do people with demodex blepharitis often feel itchy eyelids first thing in the morning? I know this because I use it to gross you out. Demodex mites avoid light and they come out mostly at night to mate.

and move between your eyelash follicles. So many people will wake up with that itchy, irritated feeling along their eyelids. So gross.

I'm surprised you even brought that up. I know. I know. I'm just trying to get used to these mites since demodex blepharitis is such a common disease and we keep talking about it. Well, that's a big step. And we know there's a prescription eye drop available to treat demodex blepharitis. To learn more about these mites and demodex blepharitis, visit miteslovelids.com for more information. Again, that's M-I-T-E-S-L-O-V-E-R-I-T-E-S.

L-O-V-E-L-I-D-S dot com to learn more. This ad is brought to you by Tarsus Pharmaceuticals. The Disney Plus Hulu Max Bundle. It's the ultimate bundle for an unbelievable price. Plans starting at $16.99 a month. Get it and watch Marvel Television's Ironheart on Disney Plus. I want to build something iconic. A new season of The Bear on Hulu. We can make people happy.

And the epic, a Minecraft movie on Macs. Anything you can imagine is possible. The Disney Plus Hulu Max Bundle. Plans starting at $16.99 a month. All these and more now streaming. Terms apply. Visit DisneyPlusHuluMaxBundle.com for details. All right, everybody. So this is this episode. I don't have like a case for you.

It's a little bit different, but, uh, you know, I, I've also have been traveling a lot lately, uh, April and May and the early part of June, like my, my busy travel months. And so it's timely, finally calming down. Now I can really focus on my, my true love and life.

about ophthalmology, eyeball topics. It's great. I still have, I still got to do some deep dives in different parts of the eye. Uh, so I'll get to that over the next few weeks. But one thing that's been on my mind recently, maybe because I recently had an argument with someone on, on what was the, the artist formerly known as Twitter, um, is just mental health with, with social media. You know, a big thing that I talk about when I give keynotes is, um,

I always encourage healthcare professionals to be on social media. I do think that's very important because that's where people get their information now. And if we're not there, then you have all the people that are giving wrong information

all the nefarious, all the evil people out there that are getting people to believe certain things about the human body, about medicine that are not accurate, they're not true. We need people that actually know the right information, that are experts in their field to set the record straight. All right, so we have to be combating misinformation. But man, social media can be hard on your mental health. It can just make you feel bad. And so for all the time that I spend

showing people examples of like okay this is look look at what's being said here this is what kind of effect you can have on social media from like an advocacy standpoint with getting uh you know legislators to to listen about things like prior authorization and private equity and insurance fiascos and all this stuff like that's all really well and good right it's great we should all be out there but i realize i don't spend a lot of time like

talking to people about how to keep from going insane, you know, how to, how to keep yourself grounded and, and realize that social media is not real life. It's important. It's an important part of our everyday life, just the way society is now. Um, but it's, it's not real life. And I get questions cause I love doing Q and a, after I speak,

And I do often will get at least, at least one question about this. Like, how do you deal with negativity? How do you, how do you, I think this is on a lot of people's minds. Most of us who, who even just scrolling through social media, you'll get, you feel yourself getting angry when you hear someone say something that's either wrong or maybe just goes against your value system. You could feel the anger kind of bubbling up.

And, and it can get even worse whenever you're, you're active posting. If you are, if you have a social media presence, if you're building an audience and you're putting your thoughts out there, you're putting out your opinions, um, education, whatever it is, uh, jokes, um,

And then you start getting people pushing back against you. And sometimes people who are very mean about it, people who are saying awful things to you or, or, or accusing you of things you never said, or, you know, just misinterpreting your, your statements. And, and all, there's a thousand different ways that, that people can come at you on social media. And so that's the question I get is how do you deal with that? What's the, what's the, what are some, some strategies to like,

Keep doing social media in whatever way you want to do it, whether it's educating yourself, educating others, trying to form a community. If you're an influencer, I don't consider myself, I don't really try to influence you on anything other than stop taking Vizine and don't sleep in your contacts. I don't know what else I'm trying to influence you about. So I do have a couple basic tips for you, okay, just to close out this episode. And the first one is the way I post. I've learned that

that after I post some content, usually it's a video, before I would just, it would be like a whole day affair. I would be so caught up in what the reaction was, what people are saying, the comments, the, you know, just keeping up, just constantly refreshing my notifications. Like, oh, what did they say on this platform, on this platform? And going back, and it was just a whole day thing.

And I learned that that's not productive. All right, that is, I'm putting stress on myself just trying to keep up with it. Most people, the vast majority of the people that are seeing your content, they're not commenting. They're either scrolling away, they're not even watching it, or maybe they give a like and they scroll away. And so what I started doing a few years back is I post a video, I will give myself about 10 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes to just see the reaction come in.

Part of that's to make sure that I'm not getting canceled, honestly, because sometimes, you know, I, I could post something and I, maybe I, I did not come across the way I intended. That's happened before. I've had to delete posts. I've had to delete videos.

Uh, and sometimes then that it's a possibility. Um, and so I, I pay attention to the immediate response from people who are seeing my content right at the beginning to find out if there's, if I'm not, or maybe I didn't think about a certain perspective of somebody who might interpret my content, my video away different from me.

And I, that's the type of, of feedback that I will pay attention to. So I just watch for like 10 or 15 minutes. I'll read the comments coming in. So if you want me to read your comment, like, like set notifications on your phone for my, for my content, because that's, that's when I'll see the, the, I'll see those comments, uh, initially. And then I put my phone away for, for a couple hours. I literally, I will, I will put it down. I will not look at anything.

And it's just a way to get my brain out of social media mode and into the real world where I can do something productive. Maybe I'll exercise. Maybe I'll just go play with my kids, hang out with my wife, eat something. I don't know, just to do something in the real world. And that has made a big difference because you can just, oh, so easily get sucked into how people who don't really are not

a part of your life react to you you don't know any of these people so why are you putting so much of your own self-worth in their reaction don't do that that's not important people around you your family your friends the people that know you that's important so i i i get a little bit of the feedback right at the beginning and then i just leave it alone all right i just go away

And then maybe I'll check in after a few hours. That just really made a big difference for me. Another tip for you is don't get mad online. There is no good that can come with getting in a public argument with someone on social media.

What good does it do? And I say that as someone who has gotten in so many arguments, sometimes I still get sucked into arguments on social media. I will sit there and go back and forth with someone a few times. And you know what? It's never productive.

It never helps. It doesn't change someone's mind. It does. All you're doing is you're trying to score points, trying to score, uh, clout points, uh, uh, trying to dunk on people, whatever it is, you're just trying to one up the other person. You're not both. You just end up coming across. I mean, you might come across as okay and people might love you for it, but in the end you don't feel good. You don't feel good.

And so I, you know, and as hard as I try to follow this rule, I still slip. You know, sometimes people will say something to me. I just can't let it go. And I feel like I just got to respond to it when really the right thing to do is just don't worry about it because that is a fleeting moment that no one's going to care about 30 seconds from now. So it's, it's not in, in these arguments that people that we all have on social media, it's

or that you see on social media, social media is not a format that you can really debate and discuss topics with somebody. Using vaccines as an example, no one will ever change their mind reading a social media post about vaccines. I very strongly feel that.

They can change their mind when they interact with someone who knows a lot about vaccines in person. Actually going to the doctor and having a doctor who takes the time to address your concerns and really get to the root of what someone's vaccine hesitancy is, that's how you change someone's opinion. That's how you change someone's mind. Human to human interaction. Social media is not it, you guys.

Like I said, it can make you feel good or bad. It can make you feel like you're one-upping someone by throwing your expertise out there. But it's not going to change anybody's mind. I really feel that way, and it's just going to make you feel bad. And then you get into this conundrum, because I started out this talk about mental health on social media as like, we need to be out there fighting misinformation. And I do still feel that way, but man,

How do you do it? I think you can do it in a way. You can get your information out there to people without getting in the mud and fighting with people. There's a difference there. All right. And so I think that's okay to do. Whether or not even that's going to change people's minds. Well, I mean, I don't think you're going to change people's mind that you're arguing with.

But if you can actually just get information out there, maybe that's helpful. But ultimately changing someone's mind, I think that's got to happen in person with each other, human to human. And the last thing is always remember, and this is mostly for content creators, people who are either turning this into a business or trying to build up an audience.

is that just always remember that nobody is sitting by their phone, like waiting for you to post content. People...

People have lives to lead. I, there, there was so, there were so many times over the years and I don't feel this way anymore. There's so many times over the years where I felt, oh my God, I have to post. It's been three days since I posted anything on social media. What are my poor followers doing with themselves? How are they surviving? They're like dying of thirst in the desert, waiting for my precious content to nourish them. That is garbage.

People love like, Oh, Oh look, there's another glockensplugging video. Great. I'll watch it. That yeah. But no one is like, when is he going to post again? Damn it. It's too long. I am not a happy camper right now because people have lives that they're leading. They're not constantly thinking about you 24 seven and waiting for you to post content. But,

social media, the way, how addictive it is, it, it, it makes you feel that way as a content creator. Like I got, if I, people are going to forget who I am, they're not going to like me anymore. If I don't post every day, you know, every day for a year, it's just, you got to get out of that mindset because it's not, it's not healthy. It's not healthy. I, it would, it would stress me out. It would just add unneeded stress to my life. And so, um, post, um,

If you're a content creator, like make content when you want it, because if you're forcing it, if you're forcing the content, you're putting it out there just to put out content, that's going to turn people off more than anything else because it won't be authentic. People and people recognize that they know when you're just mailing in content, when it's not up to your typical standard, I'll make content because I want to make content. Something happens about UnitedHealthcare. Oh, I got, I can't wait to get home and make that video.

Maybe I won't post anything for another two weeks, but the next time something comes around, I'm like, oh, I got, what a great idea. I can't wait to make this video. That's the kind of content people love. So don't, don't, don't put that unneeded stress on yourself. Make content you love when you want to make it.

That's it. Those are three things that are just top of my mind and just how to deal with posting and comments and things. Anyway, that's it. That's our episode. That's Knock Knock Eye. Thank you all for listening. I'm your host, Will Flannery, also known as Dr. Glockenflecken. Thanks to my executive producers, Aaron Cordy, Rob Goldman, and Shanti Brick, editor, engineers, ace, and producer. Our music is by Omer Binzvi. Knock Knock Eye is a human content production. We'll see you next time, everyone. Knock Knock, goodbye.

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