Traffic Exchange

Aug 9, 2013

Japanese eyeball licking real or fake

Japanese eyeball licking real or fake
Japanese eyeball licking real or fake. A reported outbreak of pinkeye among Japanese students who allegedly licked each other's eyeballs is a hoax, according to a reporter based in Japan.

Back in June, The Huffington Post, the Daily Caller and the Guardian , among other sites, reported that a group of junior high students caught conjunctivitis -- commonly known as "pinkeye" -- after engaging in "oculolinctus" or "worming," a fetish where one person puts his or her tongue to another's eyeballs.

Starfish species kids eat each other

However, Mark Schrieber, who writes for The Japan Times, said that after the story broke internationally, he contacted three Japanese professional organizations, including two ophthalmological associations, a university professor, and an organization of school clinicians to find out about the Japanese eyeball licking outbreak.

"None of them had the faintest idea of what I was talking about," Schrieber wrote in No. 1 Shimbun, a trade publication for foreign correspondents in Japan. "None knew anything about the rampant spread of disease."

Skydive coffin: Escape artist faces coffin skydive at 14,500 feet

Most English language journalists picked up the story from ShanghaiList, a website that translates articles from Asian news outlets into English.

Schrieber said the original source of the story turned out to be Bucchi News, a site for subculture enthusiasts that he says has a dubious reputation for accuracy.

The Japanese eyeball licking outbreak may be a hoax, but eyeball licking as a trend has been around since 2006, and there are countless videos of people engaging in the practice.

Elektrika Energias, a 29-year-old environmental science student in the U.S. Virgin Islands, told HuffPost in June that eyeball licking is a very intimate act, like toe sucking.

"It makes me feel all tingly," Energias said.

"I don't ask just anyone to do it," she said. "Guys I like a lot are more likely to not think it's so weird. I've never had anyone turn me down though," she said.

HuffPost Weird News editor Andy Campbell is also someone who has had his eyeballs licked.

"It's strange to have something touch the eye without it hurting," Campbell told HuffPost. "I was a receiver, not a giver. I don't see it as a sexual thing. But you have to be comfortable with someone."

Eye experts like Dr. David Granet say eyeball licking is a bad idea, hoax or no hoax.

"Nothing good can come of this," Granet warned HuffPost. "There are ridges on the tongue that can cause a corneal abrasion. And if a person hasn't washed out their mouth, they might put acid from citrus products or spices into the eye."