It’s definitely not new. When I was a kid it was Trigger Happy TV, Jackass or CKY. How you could write a panicky article like this with a straight face I don’t know.

Think a big difference with those is you had a handful across the country. The odds of being caught up in it were basically nil.

Tiktok douchebaggery trends significantly increase the odds of random innocents being caught in this garbage, see the top comment who apparently got hit twice.

And then there’s the shit that’s actively dangerous to third parties. Like pretty much any involving cars.

I agree, and I'd add that there's also a big difference in the level of talent on display. Trigger Happy TV didn't often go out of their way to make people feel uncomfortable as much as to make them genuinely confused about what they were seeing (though there were some unfunny counterexamples, like their "yelling on a giant cellphone" bit).

In the examples here, the victims know exactly what they're seeing, which is yet another imitator who thinks being exceptionally rude is the same thing as being funny.

Another difference is that those shows would get the participants' consent after the prank or blur their faces.

Although it can be an issue because of mass data collection and analysis, I think it’s a less direct problem: those who follow popular tiktok trends, especially the dumbest and most harmful ones, tend to have pretty limited following and thus reach.

Their “direct” nuisance is the bigger concern.

And the danger with today’s marijuana is that it’s 100x stronger than what we smoked in the sixties. Online porn will corrupt todays youth because it’s more ubiquitous and immersive than nudie mags of yesterday.

It’s all just moral panic