The Toxicity of TikTok

After a year of exploring 330 million TikTok videos while trying to survive the pandemic, I realized just how toxic this platform is. And yes, that is really how many videos I have seen 🤷🏾‍♂️

Must have got too much heat because he wore a mask finally

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of good information and activism that is able to thrive on the app as well. Right now, all the Native and Indigenous TikTokers are trying to bring awareness to the crisis around boarding schools. They are doing everything that they can to educate and get people to know that we as Native people, have known this true history of these boarding schools and that justice is needed NOW. They are making big moves too, because people who don’t want the truth told have reported many major Native TikTok accounts and got them temporarily banned for “hate speech.” Yes, you heard that correctly, the truth being labeled as hate speech because people are uncomfortable with the truth and take it as a an attack on them.

While there are a lot of people on the platform sharing their knowledge, talents, hobbies, and love, there are others trying to make money or earn clout. First I want to talk about the prank videos. There were a load of videos going around summer of 2020 with folks making messes at grocery stores, Walmart and Target just for laughs. Spilling gallons of milk was one of the most popular. This was a problem because of what was going on the nation and the whole world: a pandemic. Grocery store employees worked every single day of the pandemic to make sure that we were fed and our asses were wiped (#NeverForget the toilet paper fiasco of 2020).

He "slipped"

And how did they get treated? With disrespect from TikTok pranks that they had to clean up later. Many of these people never addressed questions or outrage on their pages about the messes or harm that they would inflict at these stores, leaving me to believe that they did in fact pass on responsibility to the workers at those stores to remedy. The only good thing I saw from this was that kids most likely could not reenact these pranks because of the pandemic and stay at home orders. The other set of pranks that were disgusting were the ones about boundaries. In a pandemic, these TikTokers decided it was a great idea to enter peoples personal space while in public to get likes on their videos. They would hug folks, stand extremely close to them and whisper or shout things into their ear for a reaction.

Even in a regular year, this invasion of space is problematic. It’s plain and simple, respect peoples physical space and boundaries. The pandemic added extra stress to so many people so these pranks were beyond cruel. For a laugh, real people were really distressed in these videos.

The other thing that I wanted to shed light on is the couples pranks. These are sooooooo toxic that I don’t even know where to start. Yes, maybe a lot of them are staged but to the point I made previously, the audience doesn’t know that most of the time. The problem that I have with this is that youth are going to see these relationships as something to strive for. Relationship pranks where you are so mean to partner and you say degrading things. Pranks where you expose their insecurities on the internet to see how they would respond. These are not pranks, they are emotional warfare in many cases because then it becomes a game of who can one-up the other. These couples are using private information, weaponizing it, causing emotional distress in their partners, and then posting the reaction or altercation as an attempt to get views and likes. I mention this so that you can see some of this and hopefully not support these accounts.

He was "watching" videos of other women shake their booty

If you don’t believe me on some of these points, just think about the first videos on the internet saying the earth is flat started as a joke too and people really believe it now with all their hearts. They believe it enough to fight scientists on the Internet trying to prove that the Earth is plate and the sun is a flashlight.

My third section for this topic is going to be expanded on in another post but it is about how people attack each other so easily in the comments. You can make an observation and there will be people taking sides in the comment section. I ran many experiments with this phenomenon and made some interesting observations. You can say something fairly neutral and it will still become divisive in the comment sections. There was one comment I made on a 15 second video of a man who was handcuffed behind the back running from two police officers. I said, "They all running in slow motion." The first reply to that was, "Hey genius probably because they have pounds of extra gear." Clearly I found someone who is notorious for not reading the directions of the assignment as they went on the attack just try to suck up to their overlords, the popo. You can try to be working on yourself and sharing your progress and there will be some asshole there in the comments saying that you are not doing enough. My momma taught me that if you don’t have anything nice to stay you better shut the fuck up and mind your own business.

There are mean and evil people everywhere and as a good person, you have to do your part to stand up to them. It is draining but I just remember looking into the assassination attempt of Bob Marley. In his own home, this man was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the arm and still performed for free to his Jamaican people days later. He believed with all his heart that love must not succumb to fear. The people that feared his message tried to take his life but he showed up again and demonstrated the strength of his message. So while the work of fighting internet trolls and toxicity is exhausting, someone has to do it. Maybe your fight is giving your love and support to those on the front lines or being on the front lines yourself. However you choose, maybe that fight belongs to you now, my beloved reader.