It all started innocently enough. My husband and I were in the porch discussing the day and somehow we got onto the subject of YouTube videos. How easy it is to get sucked down their black hole. How you come out on the other side to discover you’ve spent the last hour watching videos of women trying to parallel park.

But then he told me about the ultimate YouTube black hole. Before I tell you about it, let me just finish my lunch. In fact, let’s talk about rainbows or forests or swimming pools or apples for a second in the meantime so I can get this toasted tomato sandwich down. Because the mere thought of even broaching this subject makes me lose my appetite.

OK. I scarfed it.

Ready?

Dr. Pimple Popper.

He said these words so nonchalantly I had zero hint of the gravity of their impact. He went on to explain that Dr. Pimple Popper is this beautiful Asian woman in California who is a dermatologist. And she makes videos of her most outrageous, well, pops: giant blackheads, ripe pimples, oozing abscesses, what have you. Then she posts the videos online for the world to see.

So what is a girl supposed to do? Of course I had to check this out tout de suite. I mean, are we living here or are we pretending to live? So I pulled out my phone, typed in her name and all of a sudden I was watching a video of pus coming out of an earlobe with such ferociousness I had to throw the phone at my husband.

“No. I cannot do this.”

He semi-smiled, semi-shrugged and was ready to change the subject.

But that video. That ooze. For a few minutes, I wanted to see more as much as I did not want to see more so I half-listened to my husband talk about something else.

And then:

“Pass me my phone back, please.”

So I watched it. And then I watched another video of a man getting blackheads removed from his back. And then one of a giant blackhead coming out like a plug.

Listen, if you’re grossed out, please believe me when I tell you I am toning this down for your benefit. And by toning down, I mean I’m hardly even telling the truth my version is so tame.

The question is: What is it about pimple popping that makes it even marginally interesting? I mean, it’s gross, isn’t it? It’s super gross. But, let’s face it, it’s fascinating too. Isn’t it? It is. And it’s satisfying. It is something bad that you were able to squeeze out of your own body and get rid of. It’s like the ultimate houseclean.

However, Dr. Pimple Popper has brought things to a new level. I mean, this wasn’t a before-bed squeeze, there was mass and girth involved in the stuff she was excising. And at 2:40 a.m. there I was awake unable to think of anything but. No matter what I did to try to go back to sleep, the images stayed with me, as if on a constant loop. The absoluteness of the disgustingness. The fact that this, my friends, was real. Not some kind of Walking Dead makeup trickery. This was absolutely horrific stuff getting pulled out of the human body. And it was something that I would never, ever be able to unsee.

Then I spent the next hour wondering about the people who had these afflictions. How had they let things get so far gone? I mean the earlobe abscess was the size of a plum. The blackhead the diameter of a pencil eraser. What in the world were they thinking?

It’s then I realized that YouTube is something to be handled with the greatest care. Not just for the time suck that it often results in, but that there are things in this world that just shouldn’t be witnessed.