Three Kentucky teens were charged with terroristic threatening after participating in a TikTok challenge, Oldham County Police said in a news statement on Friday.
Investigators said that three separate incidents at Oldham County High School on Aug. 14, 15, and 17 were related to the TikTok challenge, which encourages students to record a video of themselves telling a teacher there was a bomb or gun in their backpack as a “joke.”
I don’t think they were done as challenges, but I remember multiple fake bomb threats when I was in high school in the 90s. Probably kids wanting to get out of tests.
It didn’t help that there was an outdoor phone booth right at the front of the school, convenient for calling it in.
It’s definitely not something that TikTok invented as your example shows, just seems possible that the amplification could be deliberate. I see it like pushing somebody on a swing where you only need a little extra force at the right time in the cycle to get a desired result.
Even if it weren’t originally deliberate, once these things start they obviously don’t try very hard (or maybe at all) to stop it. Stuff like TikTok and Facebook are cancer.