My wife likes to pop my zits, and I like to see them gone despite the pain, but some blackheads keep coming back no matter how many times they're dug out, which makes me wonder- should we be messing with those invincible blackheads?
As it turns out what we think of as blackheads are sometimes just "tiny hair follicles doing what they're supposed to do" so we should just leave them alone, as explained by Hank Green on SciShow:
...if blackheads are caused by a buildup of oil debris, what’s going on with those tiny little spots on your nose that you should not be concerned about? Those spots are different and totally normal features of your skin that are called sebaceous filaments. And these filaments are just collections of oil and dead skin that build up around tiny hair follicles...unlike blackheads, which are clogged pores, these filaments are natural products of sebum production, not an infection.
-Via Lifehacker