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Comment by tokai | Hacker News Reader

It's obscured in this article, but the guy that called the police have said in interviews that he didn't understand the hand sign nor understood it as a hand sign. He reacted because she looked distressed. Empathy and attentiveness saved the day, not some 'tiktok' trick.

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The former top comment from Cerium and the others criticizing HN sure aged poorly. :-)

“Grumpy HN users unfairly criticize life-saving hand sign” becomes “Insightful HN users correctly identify hand sign as worthless”. Vindication!

Hm, thanks for your input, but that doesn't make such a good headline. "Aware citizen calls police when seeing stressed out teenager"... I don't think that is catchy enough. (/s)

But then it is not because of bad journalism but because of bad word by the police department itself[0]: "The complainant was behind the vehicle and noticed a female passenger in the vehicle making hand gestures that are known on.the social media platform "Tik Tok" to represent violence at home – I need help – domestic violence."

[0]https://www.facebook.com/laurelcountysheriff/posts/256143486...

>But then it is not because of bad journalism but because

Did I write anything about bad journalism?

It is in part because of bad journalism too. Journalists are supposed to to compare multiple sources, and reconcile them to represent the reality as much as possible.

But hey, this is Guardian, so why not go with the clickbaity title and ride the gimmicky TikTok trends?

So it has even less to do with TikTok than if he had, just a puff piece.

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