At this point I think we can just cancel and remove TikTok… like spreading medical misinformation (accidental spreading of wrong facts) and disinformation (spreading wrong facts on purpose) is dangerous- you know, it could cost lives!
I just watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLK6dV76XTQ&ab_channel=DoctorMike
Summary of Disinformation
Some of these health “hacks” are literally psuedoscience. I am often confused, wondering how people could possibly believe that “staying in a sauna can increase your lifespan” or that pressing certain areas of your body reduces heart attack risks (I’ve often heard of my relatives talking about these things since they research about Chinese medicine since we’re Asian)- but there’s literally no scientific evidence that this works, and the cases that claim it does work are probably coincidences or the person changing their habits to be healthier.
There are some more dangerous ones, like the first lady who claimed that cayenne pepper helps save people from heart attacks or something.
Oh yeah, and this hip-hop culture that 1/2 the Gen Z lingo comes from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbdYqJP74Ag&ab_channel=PatrickCc%3A
- I’ve literally had to learn all this stuff- “W”, “L”, “mid”, “ratio”, “cap”, etc. all in the course of last school year. The people that didn’t know this stuff (some of my friends) felt like they were speaking a different language, not understanding most of the stuff they say.
Summary of the TikTok language
Not that all of this is toxic, but the fact that a ton of my former hip-hop classmates use this in daily life (yes, in school during breaks and stuff) is kind of concerning. It’s fine online, since you want to communicate differently and more efficiently by using shorthand and slang for things. But, taking online, informal (sometimes inappropriate) language into mainstream usage in-person is taking it up a notch.A ton of the time, when people use this language, they use it while sarcastically defaming or making fun of someone. Sometimes, they say, “what an L” or “Who lmao?” which are pretty disrespectful things to say during certain situations. “Who?” is basically saying that no one cares nor knows about the person (usually an underrated rapper), which is undermining their hard work. “What an L” means that something a person did sucks or is bad.
People talk like this on TikTok all the time- most of them don’t have correct grammar when typing, and some type with tons of typos in their messages (which we are now used to I guess). Now, it’s on Instagram and Twitter too:
Plus, there are a ton of dumb things that happen on TikTok- there is literally a Twitter account
dedicated to posting the strangest and baffling things on TikTok.
Like this post: https://twitter.com/wildtiktokss/status/1685368309510721536
(if you didn’t know, “corn” is a way to bypass censors/the rule violations- it actually means porn
)
And this
is even worse- people who have learned beginner English know what a vowel is, right?
A small majority of the information on TikTok are relatable- the other 97% of the content is unoriginal, stupid, dangerous, or false.
The whole layout of TikTok is also problematic- I’ve been on TikTok a couple of times, and I stopped using it a few months ago. I just don’t get the hype with scrolling endlessly, skipping through endless 30-second to minute-long videos, and commenting super short comments like “lmao”, “L”, or “wth was that” The videos are super short, and most of them don’t give enough information or spread misinformation. So, I’ve stayed on YouTube for probably a decade already, ever since my childhood.
