'Sungazing' Is the Latest TikTok Trend That's As Stupid As It Sounds Like

I might be just a tiny bit behind the curve on this—and I wouldn’t really be surprised as I’m finding it blessedly difficult to keep up with social media at all these days—but has everyone else heard of ‘sungazing’? If not, then we might all be even more behind the curve than expected, as sungazing was actually popularized in the early 20th century as ‘sunning’ by controversial American ophthalmologist William Horatio Bates, who developed a dubious method of improving eyesight without the use of glasses—including in it advice to stare at the colossal blazing ball of nuclear hellfire in the sky for prolonged periods.

The British Medical Journal wrote about the ‘Bates Method’ later, describing it as leading to ‘disastrous results’. Now, I guess because everything old is new again, and we seem to be speed-running through a mirror image of the last ’20s and ’30s, sungazing is back, baby!

I found out about sungazing through this video I stumbled upon YouTube, and it just didn’t feel fair not to share, so that others may revel in the scholarly pursuit (there’s an Aussie included in the video roundup of people expounding the benefits of direct sunlight exposure on the human eye! An Aussie!):

There’s been plenty of times I’ve felt like bleaching my eyeballs over the past few decades, but come on, guys.