[spondylosaurus]

TFA notes that it's not just a "miniscule populace". Electric Porygon affected 10% of the people who watched it, most of whom were not epileptic.

> According to the World Health Organisation, about 10% of people will have a seizure in their lifetime. And these non-epileptic seizures are exactly what occurred during “Electric Soldier Porygon.” 76% of those who had seizures during the event had never experienced a seizure before, and of those who had, most had never had a seizure provoked by TV before. This event is actually what helped confirm that people without any history of epilepsy can have seizures triggered by flashing lights. It is estimated that of the 7 million viewers, 10% had some sort of physical medical reaction but not all of these needed specific medical attention.

[teractiveodular]

I'd like to see a source for that estimate, because "10% had some sort of physical medical reaction" is quite vague and seems improbably high.

Wikipedia states the episode was viewed by 4.6 million households, of whom 685 (0.001%) were taken to hospital. While 12,000 children reported mild symptoms (0.2%), studies suggest many of these were psychosomatic and triggered more by parents freaking out over exposure (this was huge news in Japan) than the exposure itself.

[Aloisius]

I thought it was accepted that mass hysteria after reports of the first children were sent to the hospital was most likely to blame for the overwhelming majority of reports of negative reactions.

[SauntSolaire]

I'd be very interested to see how they came up with that estimation.