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Example of made up scenarios: You’re a singer. You recorded a song. How do you get people to listen to your song? You make up a scenario where your S.O. is just some random person and you play the song while doing something that shows attraction. Whether it’s hitting on the girl, or vice versa, or it’s puppies or something that invokes primal responses. Meanwhile the audio plays or you say “This is my song” and you have a dozen of your friends also promote it. Sit back and watch. A few people I know did this to break into the country music scene.

Guy in Truck: “Hey, you wanna hear something?”

Girl running: stops (pulls ear buds out like she couldn’t hear) “Sure” (confirming it was BS the whole time).

Music plays

Girl: “wow this is really good!”

Guy: “Thanks”, can I get your number?”

Girl: blushes and gives him a blank piece of paper because they are actually secretly married.

It’s a con as old as medieval cats. Not new.

Other examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

I can't stand these arrogant generalized "the current generation is wrong / dumbed down by the media / trapped by lies" takes, you know very well every generation has said this about the one after, and it's never true, you are wasting your energy shaking your fist at the kids, they are fine.

> No wonder wars are raging, people are fighting, and all while making cute videos of cats while spreading 3rd grade history plausibilities.

No, the current wars are not caused by TikTok.

> Even reporters are getting their “source” from “I heard it on TikTok”.

I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.

“No, the current wars are not caused by TikTok.”

But the propaganda is being spread on there, fueling hate crimes and more.

“I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.”

Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.

I know it sounds like a “kids these days…” rant or a “get off my lawn” but I’m being dead serious. Every single young person under 20 I have spoken with (and I speak to a lot) gets their news from TikTok or a site like BuzzFeed or Newsweek that often will run TikTok stories.

I’m not even that old and I see it. So yeah, be angry, but don’t be angry at me for calling out “Lazy Girl Jobs and how to get one” reporting. Because it happens and you know it.

> > > Even reporters are getting their “source” from “I heard it on TikTok”.

> > I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.

> Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.

So your source that reporters are getting their sources from TikTok is...20-something year old kids who heard it from TikTok? Either you didn't understand at all what you were being asked or you don't see the irony

> I know it sounds like a “kids these days…” rant or a “get off my lawn” but I’m being dead serious. Every single young person under 20 I have spoken with (and I speak to a lot) gets their news from TikTok or a site like BuzzFeed or Newsweek that often will run TikTok stories.

If you're concerned about proper reporting of news, I'm not sure that relying on selection bias is an effective way to make this point.

If those 20-somethings are journalists, yes. I understood and gave my perspective. The irony is that these writers/journalists are writing about news that matters to them that they hear from TikTok.

This... all sounds like it's something that you're imagining, to be honest. To be clear, journalists, except perhaps at the worst rags (Daily Mail and similar) are _not_ single-sourcing stories from TikTok. They may be using TikTok as _a_ source, but there'd generally be corroboration. Like, a lot of the job of journalists has always been taking extremely unreliable sources (before social media it was "I heard it down the pub" or "weirdo calls into tip line" or whatever) and trying to corroborate them; of course nine times out of ten it's bullshit, but it's not always, and having more of these sorts of unreliable sources is arguably quite _good_ for journalism. If you take the extreme case where there was no social media, no pubs, no tip lines, then journalists would be mostly in the business of rewriting press releases.

I'm having trouble figuring out what you're trying to say about journalists with regards to TikTok being used as a source by journalists, so I've re-read through this comment chain. First, you said:

> Even reporters are getting their “source” from “I heard it on TikTok”

When asked what your source was for this, you said:

> Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.

Then in response to musing about the fact that it sounded like you got this info from the very people you were claiming only consumed inaccurate news, you said:

> If those 20-somethings are journalists, yes. I understood and gave my perspective.

As best I can tell, you're claiming that there are 20-something year old journalists reporting using TikTok as a source, and you've concluded this based on the fact that 1) there are 20-something year old journalists who exist and 2) "a lot" of 20-something year olds use TikTok for news and not publications like the New York Times or Washington Post. This seems like a pretty dubious inference; it implicitly assumes that not only are these journalists part of the group using TikTok exclusively for news, but that they're also writing stories using that as their source. I don't see why you couldn't just as easily assume that the 20-something year old journalists are part of the group that use the New York Times or Washington Post, or that they use TikTok for news but don't use it as the source for the news they write.

You complained about "wars are raging, people are fighting, and all while making cute videos of cats while spreading 3rd grade history plausibilities" and "propaganda is being spread on there, fueling hate crimes and more", and I can't even tell if you think that TikTok is responsible for these major world problems as well as being a place that cat videos are posted or if you're angry that younger people are choosing to engage with TikTok instead of reading about those problems in more traditional news sources, despite several attempts at clarification on your part. To be blunt, this comes across as pretty unhinged.

> So your source that reporters are getting their sources from TikTok is...20-something year old kids who heard it from TikTok?

Depends on what "is" is... No, sorry, "it"! Depends on what "it" is, I meant: GP wasn't saying those 20-something year old kids heard it on TikTok that everyone their age gets their news from TikTok; they meant (AFAICS) that those 20-something year old kids get their news from TikTok. Which IMO is a legit "it" to show that they get their news from TikTok.

Your exposure to GenZ is very different than mine. My son’s friends come over for DnD night and they’re hilarious, wicked smart, and very grounded individuals. I’ve met friends of friends and found them to be similar. It’s only online social media (multiple sites/apps) that I find what you describe. And in that regard I have to emphatically agree with you. Perhaps just different social groups?

Also, NYTimes or WashPost are barely credible news sources today. I wish I could recant the multiple reasons that made me feel that way but there’s been too many articles, too many videos, too many audio clips from them and others like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. Forbes is another where you’d think their finance section would be immune from political bias but even they editorialize beyond the pale. I’m sure you know what I mean regardless of political side. Aren’t we all tired of being told what we ought to feel is important and worse, the degree that we ought to experience those feelings. Man, after Covid, they’re all on the chopping block in my book.

> I wish I could

recount?

> the multiple reasons that made me feel that way

People making up ahistorical shit about the medieval period to make them seem like backwards religious fanatics is far older than tiktok. Every medievalist or early modernist I know has to start their classes by dragging their students through the basics of "no, the world wasn't backwards and then suddenly reasoned because of the renaissance."

It is a general problem with a lack of respect for historians.

"to dumb us American's down"

We have literally been doing that to ourselves, for about 30 years now. We've absolutely been steadily handicapping our education system for decades.

"wars are raging"

Um who starts wars? Politicians, exclusively. What is the average age of politicians? Let's put it at 60's to be charitable. You do the math.

It seems that TikTok, which you state, and GenZ, which you imply, don't have anything to do with the major issues that you attribute to them. This whole ranting incoherent comment kind of highlights the kind of behavior that has caused those major issues; complete rejection of reality in favor of screaming at scapegoats. Actually sounds a lot like someone who was in court today.

I was not implying GenZ is responsible for the wars. TikTok isn’t helping though, either. Misinformation being spread (on all sides) and being eaten up (and parroted) by our youth.

So you can be obtuse and read what you wanted to read, you can equate me to someone you hate to justify your anger, but again it’s not me you should be angry with. I completely agree it’s politicians who start wars. These same idiots are watching the same crap their kids are showing them - on TikTok. Why else would there be a congressional hearing over Chinese spying over an app about dancing and narcissistic behavior?

So who is rejecting reality? Here’s the reality. There are two (2) wars being fought. Both of which are being fueled by propaganda and misinformation being spread causing reactions, counter-reactions, and 3rd parties to pick sides. One of these wars has been brewing off and on for 50 years, with no path forward. Now there’s talk of occupation. The other, fueled by misinformation and lies. This isn’t some guy on HN crying about kids these days, it’s a genuine warning that if we (the hacker/coder/inventor) community don’t stop it, we won’t have a community because Russia or North Korea or some idiot with a spray tan will nuke the reality in which we have known all our lives.

I don't think we need the "China's doing it to us" conspiracy theories, humans have been doing this to themselves forever.

I once got a good deal on a house because a significant number of people in the 21st century still believe in ghosts.

I never mentioned China. It could be ByteDance, it could be “The Algorithm”, it’s definitely humans.

I would have only passed on the deal of the house if it was across from a cemetery. Haunted AND on location? I don’t believe in ghosts but that’s just bad juju. Anywhere else and I’d sign those papers.

I’d pass on the house too but not for spiritual or karmic reasons. I’ve seen enough social media to know the cemetery would regularly draw content creators and I wouldn’t want to deal with it. One Logan Paul video and every cemetery is overrun with attention seekers holding their phones at arm’s length.

Chinese officials have made public statements in support of US accelerationism. There’s also a well documented history of Bytedance in China. It is not a conspiracy theory that China used TikTok to further erode US society. I wish I could recommend a specific YouTube video to link, but there are many now that cover the reality of China and TikTok. I’d recommend watching a couple.

I remember teens getting their news from YouTube and being saddened by it…so now it’s TikTok.

The players change, the dance remains the same.

> Oh how the writer was trapped by the TikTok trap.

They weren't, the entire article is about disproving the video. They literally say "So anyway, the cat video is wrong.".

I'm not sure why you extrapolate from one account with inaccurate cat videos to bashing the whole platform. E.g. on YouTube there are similar video accounts and worse.

This is probably a bad example, in that is this is an old, _old_ piece of bad history. I think it's probably Victorian at least? "Oh, in the Middle Ages, Europeans hated/feared cats" is one of these untrue factoids that's been doing the rounds for ever; it's part of the general set of "dark ages" fantasy about the Middle Ages.

An entire generation thinks Santa Claus is real yet we’ve survived.

Nothing new under the sun. Plenty of people always believed everything they saw on Oprah.