Yup this India’s expression has found a space on TikTok, youth from all across the country are busy documenting their absurd acts, to get millions of views and turn into TikTok influencers.
TikTok is different in many ways to Facebook (which is primarily your friends and family), or Twitter ( where the user proactively follows their interest) or even Instagram ( where one follows, friends, family, real world influencers about their daily life). The millions of active users in India are searching for the next level of fantasy.
Mostly its dancing, humor, but the ones that get crazy amount of views are the dangerous ones ! Where they are running against a train, doing push ups on a moving car, pulling off dangerous pranks with fire, being abusive, making death threats ( the list is long, scary and tragic). Lack of education, employment and the dream to become super rich from a 1 minute clip pushes users to document the next level of risk each time.
With no Parental/Teacher/Societal Guidance, and the constant pressure of achieving millions of views makes TikTok a very dangerous space for young people. With hardly any authority figures on the platform children have no source to get guidance on the Do's and Don'ts of the platform.
A lot of it finds an escape in humor and people laugh it off, but for some it leads to inspiration, and of the ones acting out these life threatening acts it’s really dangerous. Because of the fast paced design of the platform the only way to grab attention of the viewer is through extreme acts. Be it accidents, depicting violence, or sickening misogyny, #TikTok seems to have reached new levels in all places.
Of course TikTok has policy guidelines against such videos (But they are only implemented if someone reports it). This excuse of a tool is completely dysfunctional ! The problem is far more complex than providing a reporting tool, or an exclamation mark at the bottom saying actions in this video can lead to real world harm. (As the majority of users are neither aware, nor interested in using these tools)
It can only be solved if videos of extreme content do not find space on the platform. Recently TikTok took a commendable action against 3 of its influencers for making revenge threats to a religious community, similarly ALL users creating extreme content should be removed from the platform, proactively. I think it's high time TikTok took a stand against extreme content rather than made profit off it!