Would You Jump Off a Cliff?

Well, it seems a large minority of TikTokers would, if someone on there did it first.

Now, it takes a certain type of cretin to follow the dangerous dares or "challenges" on TikTok, or dubious advice, but I'm forever seeing a litany of children and adults alike that believe everything they see on TikTok is (a) safe, (b) actually really happening like it is depicted on screen.

I mean, hopefully the majority of us have learned that the videos where a person throws an object, be it a ball or whatever and it lands in a net or lands upright might not be what they are actually seeing.

The throwing a ball into a net trick only needs someone to throw the ball out of shot and then another person closer to the net to drop a ball into it with the requisite delay, to make it look like the thrower actually landed the ball in the net.

The TikTok "hack" of using gorilla glue to smooth Afro-Caribbean hair down famously caught one girl out who was actually brave enough to highlight how stupid she was to follow the advice and how it actually damaged her hair and skin.

Then there are the deadly challenges where kids have ended up choking themselves to death.

Now you can't censor this shit off the internet, it will just pop up somewhere else on the internet.

But what you can is hopefully instil a healthy dose of  sceptical intelligence into your kids that they will carry on to adulthood, so when they see this crap they don't take it as gospel, or they don't instantly go out and copy it. Obviously choking yourself to unconsciousness is not a good idea, gluing your hair down to your head is not a good idea either. 

Those "hole in one" videos? How many attempts failed before they actually succeeded? If the object goes off camera shot, do you think that maybe someone is positioned off camera closer to the net/hole or whatever in order to make it look like they did a hole in one? 

Don't get me started on the prank videos where kids prank their parents or grandparents to the point of  heart attack. One day grannie will drop dead from shock and a TikToker will be up before the judge on manslaughter charges.

And then there's Mizzy. The most despicable TikToker of them all. 

Fake threatening people, making them think he has a knife and getting in their face to try and get a reaction. Dog-stealer and home invader extraordinaire. He's rightly been slapped with a court order to stop his shenanigans, but I fear he's one of the Zoomers that have never been told no. 

He's abused enough people all his life from parents to teachers to (probably) social workers, to know how to play the game and until he meets some form of authority that  will put up some boundaries for him to slam into I suspect he'll just ignore the court order.

Had someone been able to slap him or punch him for his abusive actions, then he might have stopped earlier. But these days abusing someone up to the point they react is okay. It's the person reacting with a slap or a punch that gets into trouble. 

The problem is as in Mizzy's case, they just continue to escalate until typically something unfortunate happens. Either Mizzy ends up stabbed or shot because he abused the wrong person, or someone reacts to his abuse and they end up in jail. 

I doubt Mizzy will end up in jail. His sort don't. They know how to play the system, how to abuse and then play the victim when caught out in their abuse. He's the sort that will become a wife-beater in later life. He doesn't know any different. Abuse is part of his DNA and he'll use some aspect of his life to excuse his actions, like all abusers do.