At this point, it’s pretty clear that whoever first decided to add a comments section to their website opened Pandora’s box.
Because once that started and especially once the idea of giving everyone online a voice ballooned into the concept of social media, we’ve learned exactly how people tend to use the platforms they have.
But while we tend to associate those platforms with their worst users , it’s also true that big moments in people’s lives often attract as many messages of heartfelt support as they do hateful comments.
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And we’ve also seen that when you get enough people together, at least some of them are going to notice something important . And in the case of one man in Seattle, his viewers’ sharp eyes were likely lifesaving.
When a TikTok user who goes by Seattle Tech Bro joined the platform back in May, his ambitions for his videos were fairly simple.
His first videos were largely about budgeting strategies and why he practices “aggressive saving” despite making a salary that many would consider enviable.
But as he revealed in a TikTok released on August 18, there was one aspect of those videos that some viewers couldn’t help but notice.
Namely, the man had a bulge on his neck that commenters suspected was a swollen thyroid.
In various comments and direct messages, they urged him to get this checked out because it could be a warning sign of something more severe than just an enlarged thyroid.
And as he put it in his latest video, “TikTok told me I might have cancer and it seems like they were right.”
He said that potentially serious health matters are a source of anxiety for him so he went to get his thyroid looked at as recommended.
And while it took several tests before he had a conclusive answer, he discovered that — in his words — “We found out that there’s like a 95% chance that the nodule that I had was cancerous.”
From there, he was given the option to either have the entire thyroid removed or just the part that’s the most likely to be cancerous.
Considering that he didn’t want to start taking synthetic thyroid hormones for the rest of his life at age 22, he went for the second option.
He also said that the recovery process has given him difficulty speaking so he doesn’t anticipate uploading as much, but it’s likely that most of his viewers are just happy that he averted such a crisis.
And it’s hard to imagine how it feels for those who noticed this and potentially just saved his life.
