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Comment by thejackgoode | Hacker News Reader

>given all the videos online of kids beating up teachers and getting away with it

I don't think I heard of a single such story in my life. Is it a thing?

Yes unfortunately. There are TikTok "challenges" go slap your teacher for example. Similar to the "challenges" where you should eat a spoon of cinnamon, eat a Tide pod, etc. There's an air of do this and film it for clout. Most kids roll their eyes as well of course, but there are people who follow along.

Facebook was bad, Instagram was worse, but TikTok is downright freaky. It's like each additional layer of multimedia added to social media amplifies whatever mental toxin these platforms feed people.

Edit: as a sibling notes, this particular challenge appears to not actually exist:

https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/10/07/slap-a-teacher-challe...

I constantly have to remind myself that TikTok is a Chinese owned company and while a video like this would be banned in China the algorithm amplifies anti-social behaviour like this in the west.

When I see kids around me watching videos like this, I make sure to remind them and their parents this is deliberate propaganda.

When Facebook/Insta does it the motivation is money. When TikTok does it the motivation is political.

> There are TikTok "challenges" go slap your teacher for example.

These are mostly of the "razor blades / drugs in Halloween candy" sort, where there's a lot of breathless coverage but very little actual evidence of it happening in the real world.

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