Pop Culture

Pop Culture

By Nathan Mair

Welcome to the internet, the vast global repository for the entirety of human knowledge and experience wherein can be found the fruition of what Alexander the Great dared to hope for when he commissioned the Great Library at Alexandria. Of course, there are many faces to the massive sprawling web of the virtual world, for every slice of information there can be found a counterpart of sorts for, as one might imagine, when your library is so open to the general populace there is bound to be someone writing in the margins and drawing certain questionable appendages on the illustrations; as a result of this the unwary traveller along the fibre-optic highways and byways might discover interests and fetishes they didn't know they had or, in some cases, were aware even existed.

A few weeks ago he never knew anyone could enjoy this, he never thought that anyone let alone himself, would go out of their way to watch this kind of thing. Nevertheless that's exactly what he did every single night since he'd stumbled across the 'weird side' of the internet. Every night he sat up combing the websites for any video pertinent to his new fascination: lancing, abscesses, cysts, popping, bursting; he would search for hours just to find a single new video of the "popaholic" craze that held so many people both disgusted and enthralled in equal measure. His new fascination was becoming something of an obsession, not only learning new terms but fancying himself something of an expert on the matter. Despite knowing nothing of the subject only two weeks previously he would now immediately and aggressively correct any flaw he noticed in any procedure, be it professional or not.

"That's not sterile!"

"The camera was out of focus!"

"You wipe it too much!"

As he continued in his quest for more satisfying extractions he became harder to please and more unpleasant to those who offended him, thus earning him a well-deserved reputation among the regular commenters on the sites he frequented.

It was after one particularly brutal tirade against one of the more established and respected content providers, a fully qualified and professional practitioner with a very loyal fanbase, that he received a challenge from a very irate follower:

"If it bothers you that much, why don't you do better?"

At first of course he was angry that anyone would dare question him in such a manner, he who knew better than anyone how every procedure should go and who knew the difference between boils, lesions, carbuncles, cysts, ulcers, abscesses and ganglia. But the more he thought about it the more he grew to like the idea. He could get a camera and make the perfect video, he could raise a boil specially, it wouldn't take too long to grow a pimple or two big enough for a decent pop. He could show them all how it was supposed to go and he'd be an overnight internet star into the bargain!

To facilitate his plan he decided it would be best to isolate an easily accessible area of skin and simply take care not to wash the chosen patch. He covered a spot on his right thigh with a waterproof plaster and for a whole week left the skin underneath to fester. After the seven days he removed the dressing and examined the result; to his great annoyance there was hardly more than the tiniest of pimples to show for his work, a miniscule pustule barely worth a photograph much less a whole video. He decided to cover over his disappointment and leave it another week to really let it brew to something more satisfying. Only a few days later the skin underneath the dressing began to itch, gently at first but soon even the slightest touch made it unbearable. Once again the plaster was gently removed and the skin inspected; this time was much more like it, a circle of rosy skin crowned with a yellowy-white head just ripe to be squeezed. He quickly gathered his camera and his tools ready to document how a real popaholic should deal with a pop. He took the procedure deliberately slowly, making certain to show every step of his preparation from sterilizing the scalpel to cleaning the skin; he had everything planned meticulously for his crowning glory and despite his own growing impatience he followed the plan to the letter.