Baylen Dupree was walking through a store when something felt off. She had a strange sensation that she was being followed.
She was ticking, a symptom of her then-undiagnosed Tourette syndrome, and noticed she was being filmed.
When she returned home, she decided to tell her own story, rather than have it be shared by someone else. She posted a video on TikTok: “I’m trying to figure myself out,” she said. “I’m ready to come out of my shell.”
In 2020, she quickly amassed a following of devoted fans, as well as intrigued viewers and others in the Tourette’s community, who were captivated by her unfiltered videos as a young person managing vocal and motor tics. "I wanted to take my power back," Dupree, now 23, tells USA TODAY.
As her platform grew and her symptoms reached their most extreme heights, hate began to flood her comment section, with trolls accusing her of faking or exaggerating her condition for attention.
