Wunwell Flanary’s days are spent conducting eye exams and cataract surgical procedures at a non-public observe outdoors Portland, Ore. The evenings are for household, and a standing dedication to make dinner for his spouse and two daughters. That leaves nights and weekends for the ring gentle, the iPhone, and Flanary’s alter ego, an web movie star referred to as Dr. Glaucomflecken.
Flanary, 36, has about 2.5 million subscribers throughout TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter, the place his pointed satire of drugs’s many absurdities has ballooned right into a solid of characters and a cottage business. Flanary’s escalating reputation is all of the extra notable as a result of his jokes, delivered in brief skits, plumb the inane depths of American well being care. The specificity is by design, Flanary stated, giving his friends one thing to narrate to and a rising viewers of outsiders one thing to snort at.
“That’s why I really like constructing this Glaucomflecken Normal Hospital of characters,” Flanary informed STAT. “I might be fairly particular with totally different areas of drugs and create this world of, actually, fairly dysfunctional individuals. However it’s humorous.”
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There’s the lackadaisical emergency drugs physician, eternally clad in biking gear. There’s the nice and cozy however disconcertingly studious pediatrician, the charmingly alarmist dermatologist, the meatheaded orthopedic surgeon, and Jonathan, the loyal medical scribe whose dedication borders on sociopathy.
Every is deployed as a comedic foil for no matter level Flanary needs to make, whether or not a high-minded critique of prior authorization or a farcical take a look at how residency works. And every submits to a couple of minutes of Jungian evaluation, care of the workers psychiatrist. Flanary is author, director, editor, and star, with the everyday sketch foisting two or extra of his characters into an instructively maddening scenario that resolves with a punchline and maybe some music, all in about 90 seconds.
Flanary is hardly alone amongst medical doctors with TikTok accounts. However in contrast to the various debunkers, explainers, and self-promotional plastic surgeons who populate the platform, Flanary’s main concern is with making individuals snort.
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That may be a difficult proposition. The tradition of drugs is notoriously conservative, and medical doctors’ social media accounts have a tendency towards the robotic. Alternatively, some physicians’ makes an attempt at white-coat comedy have veered into questionable jokes at sufferers’ expense.
“What I feel [Flanary] does nicely basically — and maybe why he’s by no means been canceled — is that his humor is usually one in all two issues: healthful, or relatable to everyone throughout the medical group,” stated Sarah Mojarad, who teaches a course on social media for medical doctors and scientists on the College of Southern California. “These are issues medical college students have skilled, that residents have skilled — it’s all relatable.”
Flanary stated he needs his friends to see themselves in his satire, “to come back away feeling like any person understands.” However he additionally hopes poking enjoyable on the career may assist nudge medical doctors away from what generally is a monastic self-regard.
“There’s this prevailing notion that you could’t do the issues I’m doing on social media as a result of it’s not skilled,” he stated. “You’ll be able to’t inform jokes. You’ll be able to’t speak concerning the issues that you’ve got in your job with out sacrificing professionalism. And what I’ve discovered is that that isn’t the case in any respect. Folks need the alternative. Folks need their medical doctors to appear like actual people who find themselves relatable.”
Flanary, initially from Houston, has been a practising comic longer than he’s had a medical license. He began doing stand-up, “the toughest factor on the planet,” whereas in faculty at Texas Tech College. That led to writing for the college’s satirical journal, and Flanary contributed to GomerBlog, a form of medical analog to The Onion, by way of his coaching in ophthalmology.
That mixed dedication to studying the within particulars of drugs whereas practising the outsider artwork of satire may clarify what makes Dr. Glaucomflecken work. Flanary’s greatest materials balances the specificity of an skilled with the nostril for hypocrisy that sometimes comes from an incisive observer, stated Heidi Tworek, a College of British Columbia historical past professor who research well being communication.
“He does this very intelligent mixture of explaining some advanced issues clearly and humorously,” Tworek stated. “It’s this candy spot of demystification and comedy concurrently.”
Like many issues involving TikTok, the Dr. Glaucomflecken phenomenon was born out of boredom. It was the spring of 2020, and the nascent Covid-19 pandemic had shuttered companies across the nation, together with Flanary’s non-public observe.
His idle arms first turned to Twitter, the place he’d amassed some 100,000 followers as @DGlaucomflecken, borrowing the German time period for a glaucoma symptom as a result of he wished “essentially the most ridiculous phrase I may consider in ophthalmology.” However quickly he “wasn’t discovering it as a lot of a problem” to be humorous through textual content. And Twitter, an internet site on which the rhetorical distance between “I disagree with you” and “try to be put in jail” might be alarmingly quick, was changing into a little bit of a drag. Then he discovered TikTok.
“I checked it out and it appeared good,” Flanary stated. “A brief format, very straightforward to edit and shoot, and it might work on my schedule. I may assault all these matters that I’d been discussing on Twitter simply with boring phrases, however now I may strategy it differently and do one thing new.”
His early work was squarely within the lingua franca of the platform: quick, comedic movies synced to standard songs. In a clip posted April 9, 2020, he squints, scowls, and grins into the digital camera to clarify the various muscle mass of the face, all with the help of Megan Thee Stallion. Issues would progressively get slightly extra pointed, with jokes on the expense of disinterested emergency drugs medical doctors, overeager medical college students, and, in a working theme, well-paid and under-worked ophthalmologists.
Every received a number of thousand views and a few enthusiastic feedback, however Flanary’s ascent to TikTok stardom would come solely after a brush with loss of life.
On the evening of Might 11, 2020, his coronary heart went haywire. Flanary suffered a type of cardiac arrest referred to as ventricular fibrillation, through which the guts’s decrease chambers flutter erratically, chopping off the stream of blood to the remainder of the physique. Left untreated, it’s a minutes-long prelude to loss of life. Flanary is alive as a result of his spouse, Kristin, observed his irregular respiratory and carried out CPR till an EMT may arrive and shock his coronary heart again into common perform.
After a three-day ICU keep, Flanary could be fitted with a short lived defibrillator, bear surgical procedure to get a everlasting one, and — most vital for his comedy — navigate the hellish actuality of American medical insurance.
In his first video to get greater than 1 million views, posted that July, Flanary performs two roles: the flabbergasted affected person saddled with an enormous invoice, and the unnervingly calm customer support consultant explaining that if he had merely chosen an in-network physician whereas he was unconscious, all of this might have been averted.
It was a clarifying second for Flanary as a creator, convincing him to ditch TikTok’s de rigueur music syncopation and embrace what he was good at: crafting characters and writing jokes. And the outsized response taught him that slightly righteous indignation can go a good distance with an viewers. Getting greater than 1 million views grew to become the norm.
“It actually did kick off with the insurance coverage issues,” Flanary stated. “I noticed, ‘Oh there’s an enormous urge for food for this. This resonates with lots of people.’”
Over the following months, he’d set his sights on the idiosyncrasies of medical schooling, tutorial journals, and all of well being care’s many situations of “establishments preying on people who find themselves much less highly effective than them,” he stated. However Flanary had no illusions that the world wished to listen to self-serious rants from a private-practice doctor within the Pacific Northwest, so he made his factors one of the simplest ways he knew how: making up characters and writing jokes at their expense.
The Glaucomflecken repertory theater started to develop. The characters bounce off each other, both as an example some irksome side of drugs or just to be the butt of a joke. They’re additionally put to make use of in Flanary’s tried-and-true format, courting again to the insurance coverage video: pithy clips through which an affordable particular person encounters a preposterous system, and comedy ensues.
Flanary isn’t terribly involved that his caricatures will ruffle feathers amongst his friends, partly as a result of he’s by no means far faraway from a joke on the expense of his personal specialty. Each time he’s unsure whether or not a given joke may go too far, he refers to a easy tenet: You should definitely punch up.
“I at all times make it possible for the thing of ridicule is obvious,” Flanary stated. The well being care system is laden with energy dynamics, “and sufferers are on the backside,” he stated, “so I ought to by no means be perceived as making enjoyable of sufferers, as a result of that’s not going to go OK.”
When issues get slightly extra difficult, “what it comes all the way down to for me is: Do I consider that my ridicule of one thing is justified?” he stated. “And I belief myself. However in some unspecified time in the future you simply must go for it. You need to do it and stay by way of the implications.”
Being humorous was at all times meant to be a passion slightly than a vocation, however the surging reputation of Dr. Glaucomflecken has become a enterprise in its personal proper. Flanary declined to reveal his comedy revenue, however he will get advert income from YouTube, and he’s recording three or 4 Cameo movies an evening at $180 a pop.
He’s additionally beginning to assume greater. Merchandise is in improvement, and he’s plotting a approach to translate what works on TikTok right into a longer-form episodic format. That seemingly means tv, whether or not live-action, animation, or some mixture thereof. The concept is in “the very early levels,” Flanary stated, however he’s been working with an out of doors agency to press issues ahead.
The query is simply how huge his viewers could be — and whether or not what works on-line can translate to a different medium. Sarah Cooper, a comic who rose to web stardom by lip-syncing to President Trump, parlayed her success right into a 2020 Netflix particular that was not significantly well-received, after which the election got here and went alongside along with her second.
Flanary is prepared to take the gamble. Dr. Glaucomflecken’s success to this point was unimaginable again within the spring of 2020. Who’s to say what 2024 may convey? And apart from, even when all of it blows up, he nonetheless will get to be a physician.
“I’m lucky to have this good job that provides me a pleasant residing that’s at all times there,” he stated. “So this all feels actually low-stakes. I really feel like I can simply attempt this stuff and see the place it takes me.”