Few things after reading this forum today during quarantine...
First and foremost, before today I had absolutely no idea that people monetised having mental disorders. I guess I should have assumed as much, given how shitty and beyond morally sound ethics most youtubers were, but I am a "normie" by the standards of the new generation, and by that I like to think it is just fancy talk for having a life that amounts to more than staring at a screen and substituting likes and shares for actual human contact. Also, spoilers for a show including DID,, Mr. Robot.
Now, that being said, I also just finished watch the show "Mr. Robot," and given how hooked I was on the entire story and the character arcs, I found myself doing a little Dissociative Identity Disorder research. I do have a background in psychology, but will be honest with the fact that it is just an undergraduate education in the subject in the United States... but I took upper level courses on abnormal psychology, the psychology of trauma, and dissociative personality disorders. So while I have no practical experience, other than volunteer work with the homeless and suicide hotlines, I do have some scholastic experience (Side note I stayed in the academic field, strangely enough, but found my calling in law and politics, just to give you a bit of where I went with what I learned, but enough about me). I had only seen what the DSM IV-V said about MPD/DID and read case studies on the subject, as well as witnessed some clinical footage of interventions on those who suffer from the disorder (this is educational video from clinical research so I do not have access to it as it was used in my abnormal psychology class). I say suffer because it is a real thing, but very, very rare. I watched the first video of Chloe because I somehow allowed myself to believe that people used the internet like we academics do, to exchange information and knowledge for the betterment of society, then I quickly remembered why us academics like to research and suggest societal changes to those in charge as opposed to collect data and information from an eager and willing public; namely, the general public is a bunch of whack jobs looking for the easiest way to make a buck.
Chloe's first video was convincing, but it was when I clicked on her page that I quickly saw she was full of hot dog shit. So how do you debunk someone without being an actual trained clinician, well consult the one thing I do have the ability to access, an academic database full of scholarly research on the topic. So first I will quote and actually link to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V,
while I won't share my electronic source because it links to my institutions library, this source outlines what the DSM covers well, for all dissociative disorders. For those of you who don't want to read the link, you can find that patients with DID show that, "The identities happen involuntarily and are unwanted and cause distress. People with dissociative identity disorder may feel that they have suddenly become observers of their own speech and actions, or their bodies may feel different... they are all manifestations of a single, whole person." Which means each manifestation of an alternate personality ot presence is distinct and occurs for reasons linked to trauma. Side bar, for anyone who watches Mr. Robot, the main character created his first personality when he was sexually abused by his father repeatedly as a child, his alter is named Mr. Robot, which also happens to be his father's store's name from childhood, Mr. Robot appeared like the main characters father (you do not know this at first) but was there to protect the character and would take control without the host knowing. There were periods of time in the show you were left with figuring things out because time was unaccounted for where an alter took control, things got so bad the main character even forgot who his sister was and it took a whole season to figure it out. I really suggest the story as from what I have read, it is a great depiction of what the disorder actually manifests itself as. That being said, alters are created for reasons that the host does not know about, that the host cannot comprehend or simply does not have the capacity to understand. Integration is not the formal outcome desired in therapy, really learning to live with the disorder and avoiding triggers while trying to figure out the extent of the trauma underlying it all is, this can sometimes lead to integration, it can also lead to the alter created to protect from the abuse communicating as they deem fit the trauma as it happened for the host to process. The host may never fully integrate as it may just be too much to allow their mind to live in a reality that they just couldn't cope with. This is typically something that happens when a child is repeatedly and methodically molested by someone they love or someone that should care for them, it can also happen if exposed to serious traumatic stressors at an age that the brain cannot cope with stress of this nature. I keep going back to Mr. Robot, but it serves as a good example given my lack of real world examples, molested his whole life by a father, beaten and blamed for his father's abuse by his mother, loved but abandoned by his sister who fled the abuse when she had the chance leaving him behind. That is the typology for this type of disorder, and even then, it is one of a plethora of comorbid factors that could manifest. DID occurs in less than 1% of psychiatric patients, and is typically accompanied by anxiety and mood disorders as well as behavioral disorders. These people do not crave attention, because it is the attention that sets them off in the first place. They withdraw, they fantasize about a life they do not live, they dissociate, they do not crave fame or attention like these charlatans do. The DSM dedicates relatively little to the disorder because, and I am being frank here, it occurs so rarely that modern psychology and psychiatry have not collected enough data to make inferences on it.
Now on to the more promising information that people should be badgering these youtubers who make money off the unfortunate existence of very real, and very tangible mental illnesses (some of which they may actually have, but are not what they assuage viewers to believe they have, like maybe narcissism and narcissistic typology). Recently experts have been able to create tests that find those who simulate the disorder in order to obtain a diagnosis and the test has shown statistical significance with scores in three trials of 90% accuracy or above (Brand et. al, 2019 in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy), more recently complex traumatic events in adolescence or early childhood tend to be robust predictors of the occurrence of DID but it takes 6-12 years for the best and most fully competent psychiatrists and psychologists to feel comfortable enough to diagnose. Chloe nor any of these youtubers have done this, not a single one has a diagnosis or a length of treatment that would warrant one. This is not ADHD, where you can walk in and say a few symptoms and walk out with adderall, this is a substantial, not well researched phenomenon that would be well documented for the purposes of advancement of knowledge on the subject. I can say one thing, Chloe and her ilk will never be used as curriculum in university classes for the condition. I have watched one video, and that is all I needed to do a search on herand find this page in which iI needed to vent about how horrid of a human her and people like her are.
For the love of all things holy, I get that you "hate" these people, but still find joy or humor in watching their videos. What you may not realize is that by watching these videos and then talking about how horrid they are you are promoting them, by viewing the hot mess to see what it does today, you are paying them, by playing this game you are perpetuating the very thing I came here to vent about. Which brings me to my next point, and should be something that needed to go unsaid but I will say it anyways, get off the computer, call a friend (don't text), call your grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, friends you haven't seen or talked to in a long while, but for the love of god stop youtubing, you are ruining the culture and promoting these asshats with time and a webcam. It is one thing to watch sponsored videos from credible sources on subjects that the curator has experience with, but it is quite another to give every idiot with an android their five minutes of fame because they made a gmail account and pushed out some stupid video for the 'lulz.' I know, I know, its like driving by a car crash, you cannot help but look at it, the thing with youtube is that it is 1 billion car crashes, and if the metaphor serves then imagine the traffic behind all those cars, now let that traffic become our culture and you become the driver, there is nothing but open road and it is you who has the ability to hit the gas peddle. These idiots go away when people stop doing the one thing they want, give them attention, and as I can see there are 40 pages of people giving this nut attention... and if marketing knows anything it is that all attention is good attention, so realize that we are the problem and turn off the content for a minute and pick up a book or call a friend and add something to your life other than feigned outrage and a face you could do without seeing ever again.