Med twitter making certain specialties harder to get into?

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penguinspenguins

penguinspenguins

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I have recently gotten a lot of exposure to optho because of Dr. Glaucomflecken on twitter (I've since shadowed it, done a lot more research, etc.) and I now I am considering it going forward when I never would have before. I'm an incoming M1 so I got a long ways to go. Do you think this will have an impact on difficulty of getting into residency for specialties like this as more become exposed to it through twitter or other social media sites? I know I only became aware of the the field when I saw his mostly satirical presentation of it and wonder if others will be in the same situation.
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Ophtho was always pretty competitive. I don't think med twitter will have a noticeable impact on that or other specialties one way or another, except potentially by adding an extra element to an application. There was an ophtho candidate this year who started a podcast where he interviewed a bunch of program directors and ended up matching his first choice.
 
The only time I ever went on Twitter was when Mango-man was president and I wanted to know if a Twitter screenshot was fake or Trump really said it. I don't plan on making my specialty choice based on tweets. I only know one classmate who is into "med twitter" and the rest of us think following that stuff is nutty, but they are our friend so we accept it haha.
 
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YCAGA said:
The only time I ever went on Twitter was when Mango-man was president and I wanted to know if a Twitter screenshot was fake or Trump really said it. I don't plan on making my specialty choice based on tweets. I only know one classmate who is into "med twitter" and the rest of us think following that stuff is nutty, but they are our friend so we accept it haha.
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I guess my point was not that I am choosing it because of social media, but more that I am aware of something I wouldn't have been before and that could lead to others like me more seriously looking into it
 
penguinspenguins said:
I guess my point was not that I am choosing it because of social media, but more that I am aware of something I wouldn't have been before and that could lead to others like me more seriously looking into it
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Maybe if it was some obscure non-ACGME fellowship that makes $1MM while working 20 hours a week and people started to hear about it on social media. But any ACGME specialty pathway is not a mystery once you get into medical school to anyone. It is not like ophtho was a hidden gem in medicine before social media lol. It has been competitive for decades.
 
YCAGA said:
Maybe if it was some obscure non-ACGME fellowship that makes $1MM while working 20 hours a week and people started to hear about it on social media. But any ACGME specialty pathway is not a mystery once you get into medical school to anyone. It is not like ophtho was a hidden gem in medicine before social media lol. It has been competitive for decades.
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That makes sense. I assume once I actually start school all the specialties will become a lot more apparent
 
penguinspenguins said:
That makes sense. I assume once I actually start school all the specialties will become a lot more apparent
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Still keep an open mind because only the "big" specialties get any significant time during third year: OBGYN, FM, IM, peds, neuro, psych, general surgery at my school. Anything else is 2 week exploration rotations and you have to know what you might be interested in. I.e. no one is going to make you look into or shadow urology if you don't take the initiative.
 
Even if med twitter made people more aware about Ophtho, reading a tweet doesn't suddenly make you competitive for that field. Only people who are driven are able to achieve those hard to reach specialties. Simply watching a Tik Tok or youtube video doesn't make people Neurosurgeons, Dermatologists, or Ophthalmologists. If someone's exposure to a field doesn't expand beyond the surface level, they likely will dip once they learn about the years of sacrifice and hard work involved in actually getting there.
 
I think a few who are good at manipulating the twitter-sphere, playing on whatever the woke flavor of the week is, and generally building a following will have an advantage at some programs. That being said, I likewise hate medtwitter and think it should not exist and that social media clout shouldn't be a thing in academic medicine but it is.
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
I think a few who are good at manipulating the twitter-sphere, playing on whatever the woke flavor of the week is, and generally building a following will have an advantage at some programs. That being said, I likewise hate medtwitter and think it should not exist and that social media clout shouldn't be a thing in academic medicine but it is.
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I agree, on all counts, including hating it.

I did go to one conference where they strongly advised us to work on our twitter presences. It was a surgery conference, and I was talking to PDs, surgeons on committees, etc. and some said that just interacting with them on twitter gave applicants an advantage for getting interviews sometimes.

Not from a cutesy blog kind of point of view, but from the perspective of they’d recognize people they interact with on Twitter on a regular basis when you use your real name and real picture, and that they’d formed relationships with some candidates before interview season, hence, that person got an interview later.
 
Short answer: No. The ophtho on Twitter isn’t having an impact because of his popularity.

Long answer: Social media, especially the anonymous varieties like SDN can have a big impact. SDN sounded alarms on EM and radonc job markets long before most in the specialty did, and this has definitely had an impact on applications and specialty choice.
 
Steve_Zissou said:
I think a few who are good at manipulating the twitter-sphere, playing on whatever the woke flavor of the week is, and generally building a following will have an advantage at some programs. That being said, I likewise hate medtwitter and think it should not exist and that social media clout shouldn't be a thing in academic medicine but it is.
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(Not directed at YOU)
Great, let’s select even more for fake, toxic personalities in medicine. If you want to help people, do it anonymously. We all know what’s going on when you post a picture of yourself in a suit and jockey for attention from faculty while simultaneously signaling virtue and faking compassion.

I’m not saying it should be banned because at the end of the day everyone is free to do this themselves. It will just create an even more superficial society that pretends to care about more things it really doesn’t care about.
 
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Redpancreas said:
(Not directed at YOU)
Great, let’s select even more for fake, toxic personalities in medicine. If you want to help people, do it anonymously. We all know what’s going on when you post a picture of yourself in a suit and jockey for attention from faculty while simultaneously signaling virtue and faking compassion.

I’m not saying it should be banned because at the end of the day everyone is free to do this themselves. It will just create an even more superficial society that pretends to care about more things it really doesn’t care about.
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I have at least three classmates that I know of who have either started blogs, vlogs, or some kind of podcast for the purpose of listing it as a hobby on ERAS apps. How do I know? Most were started within the last year. There’s no other reason people would start a brand new blog or whatever during third year.

One of the classmates is just coming across as entitled and I hope it shows through on his residency apps. “When I was taking an international vacation in the (insert beautiful island chain), I was really struck by how happy the local people were without all the amenities I have in the US, and it really inspired me to be happy in all my circumstances.” Really. While you’re taking a super expensive international vacation, you were inspired by the people who will never take a vacation like that in their life? It just reeks of privilege LMFAO

Even the one person who had her medical fashion blog with her real name and pic (half outfit of the day and half commentary on medicine; she wants derm) admitted that she started it way in advance but for the purpose of having a great social media presence when it came time for residency apps.
 
Redpancreas said:
(Not directed at YOU)
Great, let’s select even more for fake, toxic personalities in medicine. If you want to help people, do it anonymously. We all know what’s going on when you post a picture of yourself in a suit and jockey for attention from faculty while simultaneously signaling virtue and faking compassion.

I’m not saying it should be banned because at the end of the day everyone is free to do this themselves. It will just create an even more superficial society that pretends to care about more things it really doesn’t care about.
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My classmates with the most social media presence also happen to be the ones who are the most self absorbed. One of them is a compulsive liar who I’ve caught lying about really small, inconsequential things so they could make things sound more interesting than they were/make themselves sound better. They always post fake stories on Facebook that their small following of a couple thousand gobbles up.
 
calivianya said:
I have at least three classmates that I know of who have either started blogs, vlogs, or some kind of podcast for the purpose of listing it as a hobby on ERAS apps. How do I know? Most were started within the last year. There’s no other reason people would start a brand new blog or whatever during third year.

One of the classmates is just coming across as entitled and I hope it shows through on his residency apps. “When I was taking an international vacation in the (insert beautiful island chain), I was really struck by how happy the local people were without all the amenities I have in the US, and it really inspired me to be happy in all my circumstances.” Really. While you’re taking a super expensive international vacation, you were inspired by the people who will never take a vacation like that in their life? It just reeks of privilege LMFAO

Even the one person who had her medical fashion blog with her real name and pic (half outfit of the day and half commentary on medicine; she wants derm) admitted that she started it way in advance but for the purpose of having a great social media presence when it came time for residency apps.
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Two interesting cases. Obviously I can’t provide a complete/accurate opinion not knowing these people but:

Vacation guy: Seems like a harmless dude. I think he’s very impressed with himself for writing these blog posts which supersedes any introspection he’s going to be doing about money matters.

Derm girl: Seems like she’s just trying to develop her own platform to acquire versatile clout that she can convert into a brand to generate future income, use to signal to residencies she has a platform, and increase her dating prospects if she’s single. If she plays her cards right her financial, professional, and personal well-being may all benefit!
 
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Redpancreas said:
Two interesting cases. Obviously I can’t provide a complete/accurate opinion not knowing these people but:

Vacation guy: Seems like a harmless dude. I think he’s very impressed with himself for writing these blog posts which supersedes any introspection he’s going to be doing about money matters.

Derm girl: Seems like she’s just trying to develop her own platform to serve multiple purposes (future income, signal to residencies she has a platform, perhaps attract partners if she’s single).
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I completely agree with both. I respect derm girl a lot more because at least she’s consistent and not coming across as super entitled. Vacation guy just seems completely unaware of how unrelatable he is to the vast majority of people when he posts stuff like that. Every break we’ve had he’s taken a major international vacation - he spent the entirety of Christmas break (like four+ weeks) bouncing from city to city in Europe during M2 year.

I have nothing against people who grew up rich - a not-insignificant portion of my class have physician parents. But when you’re making blogs to talk about how you learned to be happy and appreciate the little things in your life from a five-star hotel in paradise, it’s not a good look.
 
Redpancreas said:
Derm girl: Seems like she’s just trying to develop her own platform to acquire versatile clout that she can convert into a brand to generate future income, use to signal to residencies she has a platform, and increase her dating prospects if she’s single. If she plays her cards right her financial, professional, and personal well-being may all benefit!
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Don’t hate the player hate the game 😉
 
MedTwitter is not going to make already popular specialties more popular. If anything, it's going to amplify specialties gunners aren't talking about on SDN. It'll make it cooler to go into IM or FM because you'll get to know the IM and FM folks on Twitter and realize the scope of their practice may be more in-line with what you want to do. But no, more people aren't going to flock to derm just because a dermatologist on MedTwitter is bitching about skin. Well, the ones who aren't here for the prestige anyway.
 
Will Med Twitter influence a bunch of premeds and inspire a bunch of starry-eyed kids to go into medicine? Yes. Will it influence a bunch of people who are already in med school to go into a particular specialty; thus, making that specialty competitive? No.
People in med school are already learning about a majority of the different specialties. Med Twitter isn't showing them something they don't already know. If the specialty wasn't booming before, it's not gonna start booming now.
 
doomer_md said:
This is why Instagram is the superior social media service. As narcissistic as IG can be, at least when someone posts a self-obsessed picture of themselves in a bikini at the beach, they don't pretend it's making some profound social commentary.
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Lol wat? Yes they do.
 
Steve_Zissou said:
I think a few who are good at manipulating the twitter-sphere, playing on whatever the woke flavor of the week is, and generally building a following will have an advantage at some programs. That being said, I likewise hate medtwitter and think it should not exist and that social media clout shouldn't be a thing in academic medicine but it is.
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Or they could end up like Eugene Gu, washing out of residency due to Twitter antics and completely unemployable.
 
Steve_Zissou said:
My classmates with the most social media presence also happen to be the ones who are the most self absorbed. One of them is a compulsive liar who I’ve caught lying about really small, inconsequential things so they could make things sound more interesting than they were/make themselves sound better. They always post fake stories on Facebook that their small following of a couple thousand gobbles up.
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There was a former classmate of mine back in college who posted on Facebook that she had “saved” a man’s life who fell onto the subway tracks while we were both still premeds. She recounted how she was “the only one” trying to help the man up while everyone else was standing around doing nothing. The post was one of the most self-fellating things I’ve ever read.
 
Lost in Translation said:
There was a former classmate of mine back in college who posted on Facebook that she had “saved” a man’s life who fell onto the subway tracks while we were both still premeds. She recounted how she was “the only one” trying to help the man up while everyone else was standing around doing nothing. The post was one of the most self-fellating things I’ve ever read.
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I actually know someone who did save a life as a premed. Someone went into cardiac arrest at a nail salon she was at. She started cpr while waiting for the ambulance and got ROSC.
 
I agreed with the criticism of the bikini paper (why are people supposed to be "professional" at the beach??), but man you could tell that these people could not post their bikini pics quick enough. Totally only in solidarity against the paper though! I'm sure it's a coincidence that everyone looked great in their bikinis...lol
 
jambro said:
I agreed with the criticism of the bikini paper (why are people supposed to be "professional" at the beach??), but man you could tell that these people could not post their bikini pics quick enough. Totally only in solidarity against the paper though! I'm sure it's a coincidence that everyone looked great in their bikinis...lol
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I mean, I get that criticism. It’s a personal social media page, and people go to the beach. The criticism I didn’t agree with was that it was somehow sexist. The paper looked at just as many men as women and was just as critical of them. But I digress.
 
DoctwoB said:
Short answer: No. The ophtho on Twitter isn’t having an impact because of his popularity.

Long answer: Social media, especially the anonymous varieties like SDN can have a big impact. SDN sounded alarms on EM and radonc job markets long before most in the specialty did, and this has definitely had an impact on applications and specialty choice.
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Ppl only laughing off OP are missing this point. Like it or not, social media is very powerful.

But Did SDN alone have this impact or was it mostly current residents, some of whom may or may not be active on specialty boards, honestly advising their medical students they encounter at work on the field? SDN Rad Onc board is still trying to get a few dozen people to sign on for a specific person’s ASTRO presidency campaign, meanwhile Glaucomflecken gets thousands and thousands of views on his videos showing how sweet Ophtho is.

I think the question is interesting enough to merit some studying, e.g. asking graduating med students about whether or not specific individuals or platforms influenced their specialty decision.
 
I'd say the majority of applicants into fields like plastics now have carefully curated google hits for themselves on LinkedIn, twitter, and/or insta. Nobody can quantify this for you but I'm sure it's an advantage when a PD googles you and finds lots of pics of you looking hella fresh in a suit at plastics conferences and nothing for the next candidate after you.
 
Lucca said:
Ppl only laughing off OP are missing this point. Like it or not, social media is very powerful.

But Did SDN alone have this impact or was it mostly current residents, some of whom may or may not be active on specialty boards, honestly advising their medical students they encounter at work on the field? SDN Rad Onc board is still trying to get a few dozen people to sign on for a specific person’s ASTRO presidency campaign, meanwhile Glaucomflecken gets thousands and thousands of views on his videos showing how sweet Ophtho is.

I think the question is interesting enough to merit some studying, e.g. asking graduating med students about whether or not specific individuals or platforms influenced their specialty decision.
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Social media is only useful when it comes to trashing people, papers and apparently now specialties by recirculating hashtags, tweets etc. But that involves social engineering the masses while being ideally protected by tenure
 
Lawpy said:
Social media is only useful when it comes to trashing people, papers and apparently now specialties by recirculating hashtags, tweets etc. But that involves social engineering the masses while being ideally protected by tenure
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this is really an exaggeration. Sure there’s a lot of toxicity and performativity on social media, but it’s very practical to be active on social media professionally. I find social media very useful for staying up to date with what’s going on in my field.

Since time immemorial clout has been important to success in one’s career and life. Once upon a time that clout meant what the monarch thought of your art work or family or whatever. Now it’s how many followers you have on Twitter or how big of a platform you have to influence others.
 
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calivianya said:
I agree, on all counts, including hating it.

I did go to one conference where they strongly advised us to work on our twitter presences. It was a surgery conference, and I was talking to PDs, surgeons on committees, etc. and some said that just interacting with them on twitter gave applicants an advantage for getting interviews sometimes.

Not from a cutesy blog kind of point of view, but from the perspective of they’d recognize people they interact with on Twitter on a regular basis when you use your real name and real picture, and that they’d formed relationships with some candidates before interview season, hence, that person got an interview later.
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If a program doesn't want me because I don't have a twitter/don't talk to them on twitter, then sounds like a good program to avoid
 
Lucca said:
this is really an exaggeration. Sure there’s a lot of toxicity and performativity on social media, but it’s very practical to be active on social media professionally. I find social media very useful for staying up to date with what’s going on in my field.

Since time immemorial clout has been important to success in one’s career and life. Once upon a time that clout meant what the monarch thought of your art work or family or whatever. Now it’s how many followers you have on Twitter or how big of a platform you have to influence others.
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I mean sure there are probably some benefits, such as promoting papers and answering/contributing to case studies. But these things generally don't get massive following unless they're already established leaders. And with social media's terrible inability to control and fight disinformation and fake news (and even the baseless hysteria even in medical community), the cons really dramatically outweigh the pros, and traditional in person networking and hearing things through the grapevine is the best way to go.

I will say social media has a much stronger influence than SDN (which i think significantly contributed to the radonc issue as opposed to random SDN rants). But the lack of control of toxicity, fake news, astroturfing etc really significantly undermine its value that i think isn't worth it
 
whataschool_classof24 said:
If a program doesn't want me because I don't have a twitter/don't talk to them on twitter, then sounds like a good program to avoid
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That's not really how any of this works though.

Imagine your #1 dream program. Perfect for you in every way - location, culture, academic resources, case volume, whatever. Now picture the PD being an oddball that likes to bump people up for commitment to the field, and imagine one of his ways to assess that is he googles his applicants.

Thats closer to reality and ending up in a worse fit (or for fields like plastics, not matching at all) isnt really a win by sparing you the spot.
 
efle said:
That's not really how any of this works though.

Imagine your #1 dream program. Perfect for you in every way - location, culture, academic resources, case volume, whatever. Now picture the PD being an oddball that likes to bump people up for commitment to the field, and imagine one of his ways to assess that is he googles his applicants.

Thats closer to reality and ending up in a worse fit (or for fields like plastics, not matching at all) isnt really a win by sparing you the spot.
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Does googling applicants involve assuming that an applicant must have social media? Because that's absurd.
 
Lawpy said:
Does googling applicants involve assuming that an applicant must have social media? Because that's absurd.
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It'll find anything google finds. Papers, social media, that one college catalog pdf your name was in five years ago, whatever.
 
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