TikTok has unlocked a new side to social media, a side that almost eradicates the fourth wall between viewers and the creators themselves. A lot of the time when you watch your favourite content creators it feels as though you’re on Facetime with them. The platform has welcomed a sort of rawness to social media. This rawness allows not only content creators to showcase each aspect of their true form (should they please), but it also enables consumers to dwell into whatever guilty pleasure content they desire.
The question lies however on where do you draw the line?
Treating social media like your diary or best friend's group chat may not be deemed harmful and instead useful for other people who may be able to relate to your struggles. But when people with a large following begin to broadcast every part of their lives, even moments that should be dealt with in private, it becomes detrimental.
Trauma dumping is a huge practice on TikTok, and there’s nothing wrong with sharing your past experiences as a coping mechanism or helping others. But trivialising things like domestic abuse, sexual assault, child exploitation etc just so you can get good content out of it not only desensitises your viewers but also invites others to mock these traumatic endeavours giving them an open window to jump on the bandwagon.
By removing the seriousness from a situation, you’re not just normalising it, because by consistently touching on the same topic just for content purposes you’re ultimately glorifying it. The glorification of trauma can make many people who are easily influenced blur the lines between right and wrong.
Live streaming on TikTok has become hugely popular, in particular amongst a certain demographic. This demographic being lower or working-class people who often derive from broken homes or troubled pasts. For many of these people, social media proved to be a safe haven, or at least that’s how it began. However, over time by continuously airing all their dirty laundry, these creators have desensitised their own troubles and are seeing it as ‘good content’. Almost taking on the ‘no publicity is bad publicity’ approach. This accompanied by the consumer’s validation allows them to believe that what they’re doing is right and people love it.
People do indeed love this chaotic and gross content but not for the reasons these creators may think. Consumers have become addicted to trauma, drama, gossip and essentially people’s suffering. As a result of how exposed they are to it and because of how trivial things like abuse or sexual assault have been made to seem.
Take the Chyanne drama on TikTok, I’m sure many of us are familiar with it. Now I won’t be elaborating on it as there’s too much to get into. But to put it simply this is a young girl who is barely of legal age and has broadcast herself to the world being exploited by older men. Not to mention her very obvious struggles with mental health and what now seems like drugs. In a normal scenario, not on TikTok, if you saw this happening you would report it to the police, but not in this case.
In Chyanne’s case for months now people of ages 20+, some reaching their 40s have become obsessed with her traumatic endeavours, so what do they do? They egg her on, by sending money gifts, commenting on how much they love her and allowing her to accumulate a fan base. This is a girl who is being abused, and exploited and we as a social media community are not only allowing it to happen but encouraging it.
This isn’t a one-off incident either, the Chyanna drama is simply the one that stuck for the longest. There’s also the Paul Breach debacle where the TikTok community has glorified a paedophile and put him on a social media pedestal.
Most recently a horrific incident took place on social media, and a video of two young siblings having sex was shared on Snapchat. Within minutes, the story and screenshot of the video made it to TikTok, where it was turned into memes, TikTok trends and an opportunity for people to criticise the incident on their profiles. Thousands of TikTok users were trivialising what can in reality is child porn, considering the boy in the video was only 14. And for what? For a viral piece of content?
The constant exposure and mockery of such traumatic incidents have made people too comfortable to publicly discuss private matters. It’s now at a point where many have lost their moral compass just for an opportunity to go viral.
a day ago !!! thanks KF btw ;)
I just farted