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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

No, just unmoderated social networks. One of the longest-running types of “social network” (going for centuries now!) is the academic journal—but those have the explicit goal of sanity cross-checking anything submitted to them before allowing it in, so they result in something else being promoted.

(I don’t want to say it's “good, rational discourse” that journals promote, because that doesn’t seem to be exactly what comes out of journals; they do have their own incentive structures that bias "the conversation" in specific directions, even besides the ones that are extrinsically imposed upon them by academic hierarchy.)

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I think it’s a matter of time before the copy-cat stuff is going to get us one of those weird Japanese suicide pacts. They are already starting with the new crate challenge (which is dangerous as fuck).

https://youtu.be/4bFK6EBz8VY

I saw kids doing this on concrete recently. On concrete.

Tiktok is literally an at-scale sorority/fraternity, which means people are taking part in an at-scale hazing ritual - to fit in. The problem with this is the same problem that arises if you are 20 and watch Sesame Street every day still. There’s a time and place for this behavior and we are not setting any cut offs for when it’s time to stop the nonsense.

People already died from planking. And tide pods. People have been ongoingly dying from drinking bleach. People dying due to social trends isn't new though: perhaps more notable is that it's easier to know it's happening in an age of instant global communication, and since we all have quick and easy access to all the knowledge needed to avoid these entirely preventable outcomes.

The milk crate challenge on concrete is hardly different to any other dangerous behavior engaged in by (principally) young men: i.e. what's the difference really between this and say, street racing? Which has been a thing pretty much since car's became affordable to 20 year olds.

There is a voyeurism here. At risk of entering extreme levels of armchair psychology, it’s the bystander effect at scale.

You are free to Google milk-crate challenge death and see for yourself (how guilty am I for the thing that I condemn). They fall on their necks.

I certainly don’t have the answer, but this can’t be normalized, and sadly I think we are just at the beginning.

Kids abusing the medical system, disrespecting a disease, walking on shaky crates six feet off the ground. It’s hard for me to say it’s kids being kids, or the weak in natural selection being handled. Something is up.

You can also Google "jackass copy cat deaths" for an earlier example of kids getting themselves killed doing obviously dangerous activities

But it is really specific to TikTok?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selfie-related_injurie...

People are not robots. Horrible mishabs happen. But 50 years ago, nobody was doing a global list of these. They ended up being a village story. We need to educate the young to make sensible decisions. It doesnt really matter if TikTok, FB, the foobar challenge, or something else is the current culprit. The world is full of crazy things. People need to navigate that anyway.

TikTok is heavily moderated, just algorithmically and not in a generally favorable direction.

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