Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

[Deleviania]

She’s never going to do it. She’ll just put it off indefinitely to keep the drugs and the grift going. That’s the whole reason for the VSED drama in the first place. Her doc cut off her opiates and she’s throwing a tantrum like a spoiled toddler.

She made it a point in one video to say they had to have a nurse available for 7 straight days following the 5 day fast. Guarantee she runs into issues with that

 

[eternal dog mongler]

because that means they have to put actual effort into it.
most of these munchies are incredibly lazy and want instant gratification and to feel good,

Some of them certainly go hard. That seems pretty rare though. The internet munchie community seems like they'd rather act sick than be sick because actually being sick sucks.

For example you can intentionally give yourself neuropathy with vitamin B6. It'd show up on a nerve conduction velocity test and everything since it's actual fucking nerve damage. How many munchies do that? Never seen one.

 

[Look Away]

Some of them certainly go hard. That seems pretty rare though. The internet munchie community seems like they'd rather act sick than be sick because actually being sick sucks.

For example you can intentionally give yourself neuropathy with vitamin B6. It'd show up on a nerve conduction velocity test and everything since it's actual fucking nerve damage. How many munchies do that? Never seen one.

Apparently the differential for neuropathy caused by too much vitamin B6 includes Lyme Disease. I can't see how that knowledge could possibly be abused /sneed

Speaking of differentials; Allyson Tennyson (microcatmachine) posted this reel. I'm afraid it's nothing new, just her usual "doctors are gaslighting me" and dances.

(Obligatory I'm tech illiterate, tell me what I fucked up & I'll fix it.)

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Speaking of differentials; Allyson Tennyson (microcatmachine) posted this reel. I'm afraid it's nothing new, just her usual "doctors are gaslighting me" and dances.

Anyone asking for ddx would send up SO many red flags for me immediately.

Also particularly funny because the mnemonic for causes of neuropathy is DAM IT BITCH. Maybe we could stick an N in there and the N stands for Nothing Actually Wrong With You.

 

[I suck ass]

I’ve found another woman who says she’s gone onto hospice due to EDS/MCAS/Lyme and will die soon etc etc. She has a few red flags - she talks about specialists giving up on her or pushing her aside which to me always screams munchie. She’s very Christian and her posts are all about how god is perfect and she can’t wait to be with him in heaven. Her poor family

Her username is brooklyn_speaks if anyone wants to do a deep dive, I can’t go super in depth with screenshots bc I’m busy at work atm but here’s a couple! She says she’s going off her meds on January the 17th and will be dead by February.

 

[Ear]

#dying

Yeah, I think your instincts are right there. Unusually, though, she has given a timescale.

 

[Mary Tyler Meltdown]

#dying

Yeah, I think your instincts are right there. Unusually, though, she has given a timescale.

Jesus types always have the "gods plan" fail safe for when their grift changes. Come Feb if she's not full of shit itll just be a miracle or some shit and she'll keep on munching.

 

[Reddit Refugee]

I’ve found another woman who says she’s gone onto hospice due to EDS/MCAS/Lyme and will die soon etc etc. She has a few red flags - she talks about specialists giving up on her or pushing her aside which to me always screams munchie. She’s very Christian and her posts are all about how god is perfect and she can’t wait to be with him in heaven. Her poor family

Her username is brooklyn_speaks if anyone wants to do a deep dive, I can’t go super in depth with screenshots bc I’m busy at work atm but here’s a couple! She says she’s going off her meds on January the 17th and will be dead by February.
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I'm a writer and have many unfinished words to pen. I imagine I'll generate a lot of content. Join me on the journey of dying.

Posting your death announcement but then finishing it off with "smash that like button and subscribe" is really offputting.

It's also really weird coming across a pro-suicide Christian. The way she intersperses Bible verses in her long drawn out suicide announcement is just bizarre (not to mention all the Christian support in the comments). I would love to show this to some actual fundies and get their takes.

edit to avoid doubleposting:

Jesus types always have the "gods plan" fail safe for when their grift changes. Come Feb if she's not full of shit itll just be a miracle or some shit and she'll keep on munching.

It will be very interesting to see how she plays this one given that she's already announced to the world that "God has made the way forward clear." Either she will have to admit to everyone that she's not as in tune with God as she made out to be, or point fingers of blame heavenwards and claim that God was the one who changed the plan.

 

[Protozoangod]

Hope’s VSED has been bumped yet again for…*checks notes*…people spreading rumours about her on the internet.

 

[SaturnBeforeSunset]

I’ve found another woman who says she’s gone onto hospice due to EDS/MCAS/Lyme and will die soon etc etc. She has a few red flags - she talks about specialists giving up on her or pushing her aside which to me always screams munchie. She’s very Christian and her posts are all about how god is perfect and she can’t wait to be with him in heaven. Her poor family

Her username is brooklyn_speaks if anyone wants to do a deep dive, I can’t go super in depth with screenshots bc I’m busy at work atm but here’s a couple! She says she’s going off her meds on January the 17th and will be dead by February.
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I was looking into this account not 30 minutes ago (anti-science EXCEPT FOR MY COMPLETELY NECESSARY PORT TOOBS AND FRANKENSTEIN AUTOTRANSPLANT nutjob Angie Hepp [@hope_essentials and @hope_essentials_] is friends with her or something) and whoooo boy does she fancy herself a writer. Big “I’m the main character” energy. And what, pray tell, is she dying from? You guessed it: two completely non-terminal, non-fatal munchie favorites hEDS and MCAS. Christ, can’t these idiots at least lie better and say it’s vEDS? If they all wanna kill themselves they’re sure picking a drawn out and inefficient method.

 

[blue gopher snakes]

It's also really weird coming across a pro-suicide Christian. The way she intersperses Bible verses in her long drawn out suicide announcement is just bizarre (not to mention all the Christian support in the comments). I would love to show this to some actual fundies and get their takes.

As far as I know, there are a couple schools of thought on the issue of suicide when it comes to Christianity. There’s your ultra-rigid “suicide is the ultimate sin against God” perspective wherein the deceased wouldn’t be permitted a burial in the church’s graveyard. Suicide equals eternal damnation, no exceptions.

Then there’s the “God gave us the gift of life and a person in severe distress might momentarily disregard this gift to end their pain, but it’s still totally an outlier case requiring specific judgement from God to which we are not privy” perspective, which sounds similar but there’s wiggle room for mental illness and emotional turmoil that doesn’t exist in the first perspective.

A woman that looks well enough to pose for a photo with a put-together outfit posting her future plans for suicide, followed by deeply insensitive hashtags? That’s not covered under the second perspective. Christians generally believe in predestination, following “God’s Plan.” You’ll hear platitudes like “God took your child because He needed another angel in Heaven,” which illustrates that God is causing every action and consequence. In this case, for the sake of this argument, God made this bitch sick. (He didn’t, she’s faking or inducing illness for drugs or attention) He made her sick for a reason, possibly to refine her faith or serve as a witness to other. This little announcement amounts to a rejection of God’s plan for her as well as what equates to premeditated murder, in that her soul belongs to God and she is not free to liberate it from her (totally fine) body whenever the fancy strikes.

Any comment by a professed Christian not screaming in outrage and horror is authored by someone not familiar with the fine print of their faith. She should be met with unanimous dissent, not “YAAASS QWEEEN SLAYY” from the Live Laugh Love brigade.

ETA: Her update where she describes all the narcissistic supply she’s getting from family, friends, and strangers might be a clue that she’s facing a lot of blowback from this cheerful announcement of suicide. If I were her family member, and I believed that premeditated suicide fell outside the boundary of what my particular branch of Christianity felt that God was willing to overlook, I would be strenuously arguing with her to give up this plan that would result in her being damned to hell.

That “last haircut” could have been initially presented as “here, let me fix you up pretty so you feel better about yourself and stop talking about killing yourself. Don’t you feel better now? Don’t you want to live?” But munchie’s gotta spin it to fit her #dying narrative.

 

[SaturnBeforeSunset]

Victoria vagueposts (vaguetoks?) about losing her support system. Wonder who in her family told her she was a lying liar and to stop claiming genetic diseases because Margie from church heard about her EDS HHT IDKWTFElse and has added us all to the prayer list goddamn it!

 

[Protozoangod]

Kaya 💕 on TikTok

This is taking a lot for me to post so plz be nice #njtube #tubie #tubefed #gastroparesis #dysmotility #chronicillness #spoonie #tubeplacement #emergencyroom #heds #pots #mcas

vm.tiktok.com

Kaya’s a fucking cry baby over a perfectly normal tube change.

 

[TheBigZee]

Safe assumption anyone with a wheelchair b/c of vague "heds". is a munchie. Short of hip dysplasia and spinal issues any normal person is going to want to be able to walk. Maybe you need it because you get lightheaded sometimes. But lugging a chair around is a PITA and any mentally healthy person won't want to deal with it.

 

[Thomas Eugene Paris]

Anyone asking for ddx would send up SO many red flags for me immediately.

Also particularly funny because the mnemonic for causes of neuropathy is DAM IT BITCH. Maybe we could stick an N in there and the N stands for Nothing Actually Wrong With You.

Narcissistic personality disorder works, too!

 

[Moby Dork]

I don't get why these people think EDS is so disabling. There are people in their 50s and older who actually do have it (proven by genetic testing); they've had severe issues since birth, but still live perfectly normal lives.

What's interesting is that you can look at those people and instinctively tell there's something genetically off (the exception usually being vEDS, which affects mostly the vascular system), whereas you can't see anything genetically off with these young women.

I personally suspect hEDS is not real, and that's why they've not found a gene for it. Lots of people are extraordinarily bendy (especially if they did gymnastics, dance, etc as kids), so it's meaningless in itself. The EDS Society has gotten a lot of unearned clout by playing to that contingent, whereas those with actual EDS generally roll their eyes at the people claiming hEDS. Many real EDS patients have actually turned against the EDS Society over this dispute, and for good reason. Their very real concerns are being pushed to the side, for a disorder which may not even actually exist.

There are certain "tells" for EDS which have absolutely nothing to do with being bendy, and which absolutely cannot be faked. It's a genetic disease, so of course it's going to cause other problems. I'm not going to go into what they are, beyond saying I'd love to see their upper palate. That's one deformity in EDS which nobody can fake.

 

[TheBigZee]

I don't get why these people think EDS is so disabling. There are people in their 50s and older who actually do have it (proven by genetic testing); they've had severe issues since birth, but still live perfectly normal lives.

EDS absolutely can be, especially when it comes to pain. If the spine is affected, early onset Joint OA, chronic tendonities, nerve entrapments. These problems show up on tests and scans though. There is a type that is known to be painful without joint degeneration (myopathic EDS, recently discovered). The munchies (many of people diagnosed with hEDS online) say it's disabling, but when you talk to them it's almost always POTS/MCAS or eating disorder which they insist are from the hEDS - even though the medical community doesn't say there is a clear link. It's very sad because parents of children, and adults diagnosed late are almost in tears about how terrible they think the disease is. Problem is it's a bunch of munchies and it grossly exaggerates how bad it is on average. Apart from direct effects (stretchy skin, loose joints), how your impacted is extremely variable because all of your other genes have a chance to mitigate it or worsen it.

What's interesting is that you can look at those people and instinctively tell there's something genetically off (the exception usually being vEDS, which affects mostly the vascular system), whereas you can't see anything genetically off with these young women.

This isn't true. You can often tell with newborns - a floppy, alien appearance. But people with EDS can grow up to be absolutely beautiful - a mild/moderate marfinoid habitus can give (a man at least) very broad shoulders, the extra stretch of the lips a huge smile. Affected skin can look absolutely beautiful without scars. What's "off" about people varies based on the rest of their genetics. There are very, very pretty people with genetically confirmed EDS. What you do notice about the common types is the degree of hypermobility at rest. Looking at someone with their feet propped up without the knees supported is really offputting - a 45 degree backward bend.

I personally suspect hEDS is not real, and that's why they've not found a gene for it. Lots of people are extraordinarily bendy (especially if they did gymnastics, dance, etc as kids), so it's meaningless in itself. The EDS Society has gotten a lot of unearned clout by playing to that contingent, whereas those with actual EDS generally roll their eyes at the people claiming hEDS. Many real EDS patients have actually turned against the EDS Society over this dispute, and for good reason. Their very real concerns are being pushed to the side, for a disorder which may not even actually exist.e

The advent of affordable sequencing that would allow the discovery of these genes coincided with the growth of the internet and munchausen's by internet/extreme health anxiety. It took until 2017 for them to do something about the fact that every largeish study had been confounded by people lying about the severity of their joint issues. They have made two important discoveries (myopathic EDS, classical like ehlersdanlos due to TNXB deficiency), as well as find a correlation with hEDS and TNXB halpoinsufficiency - the problem being the latter isn't specific enough.

There are certain "tells" for EDS which have absolutely nothing to do with being bendy, and which absolutely cannot be faked. It's a genetic disease, so of course it's going to cause other problems. I'm not going to go into what they are, beyond saying I'd love to see their upper palate. That's one deformity in EDS which nobody can fake.

There are no hard and fast rules for what skeletal/muscular deformities someone will wind up with. Stenberg's sign, gorlin sign, marfinoid habitus, etc - all depend on other genes and sometimes luck. Someone can be absent all of them and still have more interesting issues like prolapsed bladder/bowel/genitals, multiple hernias, joint instability, etc.

EDS is complicated and without going off a central medical records repository it's impossible to know if anyone one person has it by what you can see from the outside. There's no reason people with genetically confirmable EDS can't also have factitious disorder. What's important is to look at the behavior - anyone who makes "sick" their identity has the chance to have their behavior driven by the same pyschological pathology that drives the extreme munchers.

Like with that girl in the wheelchair earlier. She very clearly wants the social benefits of being sick. She's actively pursuing it. The goal of empowerment was to encourage people with disabilities to live their best lives. These people are subverting how it's been encouraged to enhance the social benefit they get from being seen as sick. These people crept in and the woke mob kept them from getting mocked/shunned for not focusing enough on what they could do. Hey, let's all celebrate needing rollators/cains!

edit: a lot of pictures from people celebrating illness only show their hands. I'm always doing mental calculations to figure out how fat they'd need to be for their fingers and hands to be so hammy. There is something to the "FFF" thing, but thin people slip on by too.

EDS (except for some subtypes) wouldn't be any more painful or disabling than acquiring OA/spinal disease whatever without the condition, and EDS isn't a garauntee you will ever have those things.

 

[Mayhem]

I think you're right about girls, but I don''t think the older women are all about attention. At a physiologically low level - metabolism, energry output, recovery, etc women and men have significant differences. Expecting women to be able to maintain the productivity of men long term wears a lot of women down. Especially post 40. That's before you add the biological role women have to fill on top of societal. Equitable and equality aren't always the same thing. I can't blame young girls for rejecting their gender identity in high school - if you're going to put the expectations of achieving the same things as a man+being a woman on someone, why not just shitcan the woman part.

A little late and gay, but I found this comment insightful. One thing that is rarely talked about at all in regard to women’s health is the effect of menopause. I went through menopause unusually early, and I was misdiagnosed for years until a simple blood test at an endocrinologist’s office found it. Once the diagnosis was in, all the symptoms I’d been experiencing for years, which my doctors had no real explanation for, made sense.

Someone else also talked about the fact that women’s health concerns, historically, have not been taken seriously (sorry, I’m a newfag and can’t figure out how to quote more than one post at once) and that research into women’s health issues is lacking. Modern women are expected to endure a lot in silence: not only keeping up with the demands of their spouses and families, but also with productivity at work. And, sometimes if not often, a woman is undergoing a major hormonal change, such as pregnancy or menopause, this has profound effects on both her physical and mental health.

Now, I think the munchies in this thread are definitely doing all of this for narcissistic validation, but I think the conversation we are having about women’s mental and physical health is important.

 

[Dnein]

I don't get why these people think EDS is so disabling. There are people in their 50s and older who actually do have it (proven by genetic testing); they've had severe issues since birth, but still live perfectly normal lives.

What's interesting is that you can look at those people and instinctively tell there's something genetically off (the exception usually being vEDS, which affects mostly the vascular system), whereas you can't see anything genetically off with these young women.

I personally suspect hEDS is not real, and that's why they've not found a gene for it. Lots of people are extraordinarily bendy (especially if they did gymnastics, dance, etc as kids), so it's meaningless in itself. The EDS Society has gotten a lot of unearned clout by playing to that contingent, whereas those with actual EDS generally roll their eyes at the people claiming hEDS. Many real EDS patients have actually turned against the EDS Society over this dispute, and for good reason. Their very real concerns are being pushed to the side, for a disorder which may not even actually exist.

There are certain "tells" for EDS which have absolutely nothing to do with being bendy, and which absolutely cannot be faked. It's a genetic disease, so of course it's going to cause other problems. I'm not going to go into what they are, beyond saying I'd love to see their upper palate. That's one deformity in EDS which nobody can fake.

Not yet finding a gene for something is incredibly common, because our current understanding of the genome is incredibly basic and superficial at best at this point. It's a very poor argument to make for something not existing. We've barely begun to understand these things scientifically. Not to mention that there are plenty of acquired diseases... not that this is relevant in the current thought on hEDS.

Basing medical opinions on fakers is giving them too much power. Would you also say MDD does not exist because moody teenagers claim to be depressed? It seems generally accepted that hEDS is real, or at least exists in some form as a waste bin diagnosis. The thing about the waste bin is that it's full of hypochondriacs and munchies, yes, but it also contains a good number of people that haven't been properly diagnosed or simply cannot be at this time.

Medical science is not at a state of complete understanding by any means in the realm of genetics or even general disease, that isn't how science works. It's ever changing and expanding. Does that mean it shouldn't be trusted? Of course not. Is this fact taken advantage of by these people? Absolutely.

 

[TheBigZee]

A little late and gay, but I found this comment insightful. One thing that is rarely talked about at all in regard to women’s health is the effect of menopause. I went through menopause unusually early, and I was misdiagnosed for years until a simple blood test at an endocrinologist’s office found it. Once the diagnosis was in, all the symptoms I’d been experiencing for years, which my doctors had no real explanation for, made sense.

Someone else also talked about the fact that women’s health concerns, historically, have not been taken seriously (sorry, I’m a newfag and can’t figure out how to quote more than one post at once) and that research into women’s health issues is lacking. Modern women are expected to endure a lot in silence: not only keeping up with the demands of their spouses and families, but also with productivity at work. And, sometimes if not often, a woman is undergoing a major hormonal change, such as pregnancy or menopause, this has profound effects on both her physical and mental health.

Now, I think the munchies in this thread are definitely doing all of this for narcissistic validation, but I think the conversation we are having about women’s mental and physical health is important.

There's a lot of bullshit out there that isn't going to be addressed by pretending men and women are the same. I'm sorry something that should have been obvious got missed. Have you thought about starting a tik-tok where you do dances while talking about how irritating it is other women are so mensist by complaining about their periods?