It’s become the most disgusting part of my morning routine.

I stir, rub my eyes, stretch a little bit and grab my phone. And after I’ve checked all the news websites and scanned my overnight messages, I open Instagram. Before the app even loads, I know what the algorithm will deliver to top of my feed.

Some days it’s a milky yellow, like the colour of brie. Some days it ‘s brown or black or has a cottage cheese-like quality, filled with fine lumps. Sometimes it’s a proper surgical procedure. Sometimes it’s just squeezing.

One of the first things I do every morning is watch a video from Sandra Lee, aka Dr Pimple Popper, as she lances a hideous pustule on one of her poor patients.

Before you say anything, don’t worry! I disgust myself! It’s not that I *like* watching pimple popping. It’s just that I find the videos incredibly compelling. And I’d probably be too ashamed to admit I get something out of watching pimple popping videos but for the fact I know I’m not the only one.

Sandra Lee – Dr Pimple Popper – has an Instagram following the size of New Zealand. She has her own TV show following her and her patients as she exorcises cysts and boils and miscellaneous subcutaneous lumps while learning a bit about their backstories. She’s got a good sense of humour and an empathetic nature and she calls her followers ‘popaholics.’ I don’t know who was the first person to work out there was an audience for this, but following Dr Pimple Popper’s success, there are all sorts of other dermatological spinoffs and social media stars who’ve built huge followings with their disgusting work.

It must be one one of the weirdest sub-cultures and professions to flourish in the internet age.

‘Mum and Dad, when I grow up... I want to be a professional pimple popper.’

Heads up. This next bit’s gonna’ be really disgusting.

I want to tell you about my favourite types of pimple popping video.

You might naturally think the worse the pimple, the more compelling the watch. But you’re wrong. It’s true that quite often, Sandra Lee has some poor patient with a tennis ball-sized growth on their jaw or a small marrow between their shoulder blades. A sebaceous cyst which has really got out of control. She has to scalpel down, squeeze out the ooze, and remove the cyst sack. But nah, that’s a bit too surgical for me.

Me, I’m old school. I like blackheads, ingrown hairs, and above all else an incredibly disgusting dermatological phenomenon called a 'dilated pore of winer'. It’s kind of like a blackhead and an ingrown hair combined. It’s not creamy or liquidy like most pimples. It’s hard, like a plug buried just under your skin.

You’ve gotta lance the sides and then manipulate it off its setting. If all goes well you can pop it out whole and it leaves a clean little crater in its wake.

Four billion years of evolution and this is where we’re at? Humans are so messed up.