Trauma Dumping

Submission 11,037

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About

Trauma Dumping is a slang expression describing an act of unexpectedly sharing an unsolicited personal trauma story, such as a story sent to a streamer in a message accompanying a donation. The practice has achieved public attention in mid-2021, with memes commenting on it and parodying it becoming more widespread.

Origin

"Trauma dumping" is a specified term within the broader category of "emotional dumping." The term "emotional dumping," meaning unprompted oversharing of personal feelings and anxieties with another person, has been used online approximately since the late 2010s. On February 24th, 2010, Urban Dictionary^[1] user JLLee added a definition for the term to the website, where it gained over 8,500 thumbs up in 11 years (seen below).

Unloading all of your emotional crap unmercifully onto one or more of your friends.

The earliest found instances of the use of the term "trauma dumping" are Twitter^[2]^[3] posts by various users made starting in July 2017 (example shown below, left). On August 22nd, 2018, Twitter^[4] user @FeelingFrisky made the earliest viral tweet about trauma dumping (shown below, center). The tweet received over 2,600 retweets and 10,400 likes in three years. On August 23rd, @FeelingFrisky made a tweet^[5] in which they gave a definition to the term (shown below, right).

Spread

In 2018 and 2019, the term did not see active use; however, several tweets^[6] discussing trauma dumping gained limited traction. This includes September 25th, 2018, and September 30th, 2019, tweets^[7]^[8] by user @FeelingFrisky, the latter of which received over 930 retweets and 4,700 likes in two years (shown below, left). On July 27th, 2020, Twitter^[9] user @sailorguardian posted a viral tweet about trauma dumping that gained over 21,900 retweets and 96,000 likes in one year (shown below, right).

On July 7th, 2021, Twitter^[10] user @glittergoatss posted the first viral meme about trauma dumping, a reaction image meme about adult Tumblr users unloading their personal issues onto teenage users based on an image of Family Guy character Lois breaking down in front of her infant son Stewie. The post gained over 9,200 retweets and 95,100 likes (shown below).

In mid-August 2021, the term achieved its viral phase within public discourse on social media, with multiple viral posts and memes about trauma dumping being posted on Twitter and other sites.