 All right, welcome back to the channel everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael AKA Dr. Chlini and I'm an interventional radiologist. Hopefully you don't hear as much echo as you did in the previous video because I put up some like sound dampening panels. But if you do hear some echo, let me know in the comments below. I may need to put up some more. Also, this is still a disaster. I have my board exam in two days. So I was testing out all these different like setups and how I'm gonna do it. I think I was just gonna use this screen plus my laptop. Take it this way, take it in my office. That way nobody bothers me. You have to have a webcam to like watch you. This whole thing is just ridiculous. But nonetheless, it is on Wednesday and this will be my setup for it. I still don't have my desk here, which is just a whole another thing. I'm not gonna talk about it because I was getting depressed. You've seen the title of this video and by now you know that it's about SDN and Reddit and those kind of forums. And the reason I'm doing a video on this is because someone sent me a message of a screenshot of some of the comments on, I don't even know what post it was on Reddit. This was the comment. I'll put it right up here as I read it. With that being said, I do know that there's at least published data and resident attractiveness is more influential than most other metrics for when ranking desirability for interview. I am suspicious that this is how influencers such as Dr. Chalini, myself and Madeline from Madeline's Musing, also my friend, wake up here, got their highly competitive resident specialties. So this person is basically saying that the reason I got into international radiology, which is a very competitive field and the reason Madeline got into dermatology, which is another really competitive field is because we're attractive. Now, that's very nice of them to say. However, that is so not true and it discounts all the hard work we did to get here. Someone sent me that and they were like, why don't you just talk about student doctor and Reddit and all that stuff in the video? And that's what prompted me to do this video. So let's go ahead and get on into it. All right, so I'll admit I do browse Reddit every now and then. I think it has some pretty good information and it's pretty funny at times, but there's so much stuff out there that's bad for you, especially in the medical subreddits. So today I'm going to talk about a few reasons why you shouldn't check these websites and then maybe at the end I'll talk about a few things I liked about these websites. Reason number one that you should not browse these websites is because they are full of misinformation. Like literally there's good information on these websites, but also there are so many misinformed people talking and commenting on these platforms and it's kind of crazy. You have to think about it, especially on the pre-med, the medical student, the residency subreddits, there are a whole bunch of people commenting on stuff they don't even know about yet. For instance, medical students are talking about how they matched into residency and how you should match into residency. They haven't done that yet. The residents are talking about how you should do X job or what you should be looking for or talking about future careers in that field and they obviously don't know what they're talking about either because they haven't had a job in their field yet. So there really is just a ton of misinformation about stuff nobody really knows about. I always get a ton of crap on these websites, especially like the subreddits, like residency subreddits because my wife is a PA and they're like, oh, he's just a PA shill, he's out there just being such a, you know what? And supporting his wife, he probably doesn't even like PAs all the time. I'm like, what are you even talking about? And that's the thing that drives me crazy is the same people who are making those statements about how PAs are taking all the physician's jobs and PAs are bad for physicians and all this stuff, they, that's how much they don't know. For instance, I've said a million times, PAs in my practice and in my field especially, like I literally wouldn't be able to do my field without them. They literally allow me to do the things that I need to do and spend time on so I don't have to waste my time doing like 5,000 other things at the same time. Like it's crazy, that's how you know they have no clue, but they're commenting about it, talking about it, they're stealing my jobs, they're stealing these jobs, they're not stealing my job. I literally can't function or do my job without them. My job would be unbearable without PAs. So no, I'm not a shill for PAs, like Reddit likes to think so, but I do support them because they have their role in medicine, just like everything does. You just really have to be careful when you're looking at these websites because you get a lot of misinformation. I don't know how else to put it. You have med students who haven't mentioned into dermatology talking about how to mention the dermatology. Now, this is all they're just best possible guess, but you shouldn't take advice for someone who hasn't done that. But if there are some dermatology residents commenting on the medical student boards, that can be valuable information, but it's just a whole bunch of pre-meds and med students throwing back and forth and all this stuff, it's just not good. It's not good for your mind. It's not good for your body. It's not good for your future. The next reason you should stay away from some of these websites is because when you browse these websites, especially as a pre-med or med student, you end up comparing yourself to everybody. And the reality is people posting on these websites aren't just the average Joe a lot of the times. For some reason, everybody on Reddit and everybody on Student Doctor is, you know, AOA, step one of 280, step two of 280, have all the research, so the best possible applicants in the entire world. But in reality, that's just not the case for everybody. So you shouldn't be comparing yourself to them because that's the upper echelon of academia. And most people don't fall in that region. I found myself in this trap when I was in med school and I was studying for step one. I started looking at some of these websites and then I see like everybody's getting these bomb scores and I'm like, what the hell, man? Like I'm not getting anywhere close to this on my practice test. And then like it starts to freak you out. And then it just like makes you more anxious and worried about your exams and like worried how you're performing compared to the rest of the world and all this stuff. But reality is a lot of it may even just be fake. Like I could literally go on there and be like, oh, I'm like the best applicant in the world. This is me and people would take my advice. But really there's no documentation. It's not like I'm showing my board score or anything. It's just completely anonymous. So be careful, don't go on there. You're going to end up comparing yourself to others and it's just not good for you. The main thing is you need to focus on you, focus on yourself, focus on what you need to do and stop comparing yourself to others because only negativity can come from it. The next reason I think you should stay away from these websites is because people are like downright nasty on these websites. The pure hate they have for osteopathic students or DOs or nurse practitioners or physician assistants, it's so mean and so unnecessary and that kind of environment doesn't exist in the real world because of the people on these websites actually presented this way in real life, they would have no job because even if you don't like people, even if you think nurse practitioners are the worst things ever, for example, not saying they are, even if they think that, you can't say that in real life because you would be fired. So they hide behind these keyboards and post whatever they want about whoever and it's just completely negative, bad energy and it really gets us nowhere. I can't tell you how many negative things have been said about me on Reddit but I think it's funny personally, like some of my followers have sent me stuff and they're literally like, this guy has a punchable face or like I hate his haircut or something like that and I'm like, who says that about someone? Like who hates someone's haircut and like actually feels the need to comment it on a forum and not to that person or like what? Also, who cares if you hate my hair? Like I don't care, I'm fricking in my 30s and I barely have any hair, what do you want from me? I just think it's funny, like a normal person would never go on a forum and comment about someone's appearance for whatever. My point of all this is people are just nasty on that website, to a lesser degree student doctor, more so Reddit, so like what's the point of even hanging around those kind of people? You wouldn't wanna hang around those people in real life so why would you wanna hang out with them on a website? There are better things to do with your time, like I don't know, study medicine. The next thing I wanted to mention is something that I already kind of touched on and it's a lot of misinformation, a lot of it is based on hearsay and not on facts, a lot of it is anecdotal. It's not a good idea to kind of get caught up in this misinformation fest. It's hard to verify certain things on these websites and how accurate they are and how accurate something is at something same so it's better to just ignore. I told but she does so good by the way. And now, since I have frequented these websites for many, many years now, I'll tell you my favorite things about them because there are in fact some good things about these websites. If you weep past all the negativity and you weep past all the misinformation and all that stuff, there actually is some good information on these websites. You just have to search for it and the way you do it and the way that these websites can be helpful is if you look up specific things. So for instance, when I was going back to school to do my pre-medical school prerequisite courses, I went to student doctor and the non-traditional section and learned everything I need to know about that specific thing, everything I need to know to get into med school, what I need to do, what classes I need to take and it was fantastic. That literally got me into med school. So for that specific instance, it was very valuable to me and I know I'm kind of like contradicting myself because I said there's a lot of misinformation out there but you just have to weed through it. I don't know how else to explain it because I am a fan of a form for all med students and like all like-minded medical people to be on but you have to kind of look through the trolls and the misinformation and it's hard but some things can be very helpful, specific things. Another specific topic is like a study technique. Say there's a specific study plan, someone posted for studying for a step one or something. It's pretty easy to tell if that's misinformation or not. Stuff like that could be very useful to you and helpful for your career and helpful for your studies. Another good thing about these websites is you can actually meet people on them. I've seen a ton of people post especially on student doctor talking about how they would like to have a study partner for a step one or step two or whatever and these are great places to meet that person and find a new study partner to help you study going forward. So for this reason, they aren't that bad. The next reason I love these websites and probably the reason why most of you all visit these websites is because they're funny. They have a lot of funny memes and funny stories and hilarious medical related things. It's just a good place if you wanna just sit back and laugh, read a few memes, watch a few funny videos and read about a few funny topics. So if you're bored and you wanna get laugh, this is the place to go but just be careful because there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of misinformation but the memes are on point. So that officially concludes this video. Hope you all enjoyed it. I hope the Redditors don't come after me for this because I do love Reddit. I browse Reddit all the time but I'm not a poster and I don't like all the negativity and the misinformation out there. So comment below if you frequent these websites and what your favorite things are about them. Curious as to what you say or tell me your favorite subreddits and maybe I'll browse some of them too. This video means no hate. I love Reddit, love student doctor. Just be careful when browsing them. Thought it'd be a funny topic to talk about since I got that funny thing sent to me. So on the note, I'll see you all on the next video. Bye.