- INSIDER gathered some of the most watched and most satisfying pimple-popping videos of 2018.
- Haters of pimple popping, turn away now.
- Warning: This post contains graphic videos and images.
Whether you love pimple- and zit-popping videos or gag even thinking about them, you have to concede that they’ve got staying power. The trend continues to flourish online, and the genre has even expanded to mainstream TV with the premiere of Dr. Pimple Popper‘s TLC series earlier this summer.
All year long, we here at INSIDER have been combing through the ongoing influx of popping content, looking for the very best cyst, blackhead, and lipoma videos.
Here’s a list (in no particular order) of 2018’s best, grossest, and most breathtaking pimple pops.
1. The perfect Dr. Pimple Popper dilated pore of winer
No list of pimple-popping videos would be complete without content from the genre’s reigning queen: California dermatologist, YouTuber, and TV star Sandra Lee, aka Dr. Pimple Popper. And what better way to start this list than to highlight one of Lee’s most beloved videos of 2018?
Read more: How to know if a pimple is safe to pop or if you should just leave it alone
One of her most popular pops of the year, with 8.6 million views, is a video posted back in January. It features a dilated pore of winer, which is essentially a giant blackhead clogging a single, super-stretched-out pore. Skip ahead to the one-minute mark for the first big squeeze.
2. The 50-year-old blackheads around the eyes
There’s something about advanced pimple age that makes a pop ultra compelling. To know that a clogged pore hasn’t been touched in years, or even decades, makes the removal of the gunk inside it all the more satisfying.
So it’s no wonder that more than 2.4 million people watched this video featuring dozens of 50-year-old blackheads clustered around a man’s eye. It was posted in March by India-based dermatologist and cosmetologist Lalit Kasana, who used a simple technique — two Q-tips and gentle pressure — for the 14-minute extraction session. Can’t get enough? There’s another video dedicated to the blackheads around the patient’s other eye.
3. The pore-strip saga
Every once in a while a great DIY popping video rivals the offerings of the YouTube pros. This video, posted to Reddit’s /r/popping community in April, is one such example.
It shows a woman peeling a total of 16 pore strips off of her boyfriend’s back, dredging up hundreds of blackheads in the process. INSIDER interviewed Kevin Andrew, the man pictured in the video, who said his doctor said the clogged pores were due to sun exposure. Dermatologists call these types of blackheads solar comedones.
<blockquote class=”reddit-card” data-card-created=”1525356735″><a href=”https://www.reddit.com/r/popping/comments/89lf1p/millions_of_blackheads_on_the_back/?ref=share&ref_source=embed”>Millions of blackheads on the back</a> from <a href=”http://www.reddit.com/r/popping”>r/popping</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//embed.redditmedia.com/widgets/platform.js” charset=”UTF-8″></script>
4. The ear blackhead that’s worth the wait
澄熒SPA’s YouTube channel, owned by a spa in Taiwan, is a hidden treasure in the popping world. It has just 153,500 subscribers (compare that to Dr. Pimple Popper’s 4.7 million) but often features the internet’s most jaw-dropping inside-the-ear blackheads.
Read more: Dr. Pimple Popper released a 7-minute compilation video with only ear blackheads
This year’s 澄熒SPA videos haven’t disappointed. One video posted in July shows an ear blackhead that spans two separate pores. It’s excruciatingly slow going at first as the technician prods the skin with a pair of tweezers, but the payoff at the three-minute mark is worth the wait.
5. The ‘extremely brave’ patient with bumps on his privates
With 5.2 million views as of this writing, this video is from January is among Dr. Pimple Popper’s most watched of the year. But it’s not about pimples at all.
Instead, it highlights calcinosis cutis, calcium deposits in the skin that manifest as small, covered bumps. The patient in this video happens to have hundreds of them, all located on his scrotum.
The bumps are painless and benign, according to a paper published in 2017 in the Journal of Medical Case Reports. But Lee’s video reminds viewers that even technically harmless growths can have real, negative impacts on a patient’s life. (Lee told INSIDER in June that she’s always tried to deliver this message in her videos.)
Watch Lee squeeze and remove the bumps below, and you’ll see exactly why she called this patient “extremely brave.”
6. The soothing extraction session
If you love relaxing popping sessions, you’ll love following aesthetician Enilsa Brown. You won’t find gushing blood or flying pus on her YouTube channel, but you will find dozens of lengthy videos in which Brown ever so gently cleans out clogged pores, explaining each step of the process in her soothing voice.
This acne-extraction video from January has drawn 7.9 million views, making it Brown’s second most popular video ever. The pimple she pops at the five-minute mark is one to remember.
7. The cottage-cheese leg cyst
What was perhaps the year’s biggest popping news came in February when Lee announced that she would be starring in her very own TV series on TLC, aptly titled “Dr. Pimple Popper.”
The show follows Lee as she treats patients with skin conditions even more dramatic than the ones seen on her YouTube channel. The premiere, on July 11, started with “the biggest” lipoma Lee has ever removed. But the second episode featured a truly unforgettable cyst, filled with gunk that looked a lot like cottage cheese.
In the episode, a patient named Ronen seeks out Lee’s help with a painful cyst on his leg that’s been growing for decades. As soon as Lee slices into it, a waterfall of dead, wet skin cells bursts forth. The cyst’s volume is astonishing.
A complete video of the pop isn’t available on social media, but you can see a sneak peek below, and the entire episode is available to stream on TLC’s website. This one is well worth taking the time to watch.
