Clout and kids don't mix really. And if you just put both of these elements in
an uncontrolled environment, I have a feeling arson is going to be the least of your problems.
Hi, and welcome back to me and talking about whatever I want. Today I want to talk about
TikTok challenges and how they're ruining my life. Well, not my life but most of the lives of
the people trying them. It is however, ruining my day. But before that of course, I'd like to give a
comment shout out from my last video. Yesterday's comment shout out goes to Marble Water, who said,
"Plot twist, D'Angelo isn't as old as he says, his stylist is just making him look older." You know,
I wish that was the case because if I wasn't this old, I wouldn't have to pay taxes. This
baby face right here works on everyone except the IRS. But that comment was of
course the reference to my last video, which is doing super well. The whole channel was doing
super well. We just passed 69,000 subscribers. Seriously, if you are a bored, go look at my
Social Blade. It is popping right now. And since I like to keep it that way, I'm going to talk about
TikTok. But to be honest, I'm kind of tired of like the typical TikTok reaction videos,
where you find someone really weird on TikTok and then you just talk about them
for 10 minutes. I enjoy watching them every now and then, but I feel it's been done, right? We
get it. There's a lot of really weird people on TikTok with a lot of followers. So while this
is most certainly going to be a TikTok reaction video, I'm not going to be reacting to specific
people. I thought what if I reacted to specific challenges. See, I don't use TikTok frequently
but I do read a lot of articles and anytime TikTok pops up in the news, it's not for a good reason.
So allow me to present these TikTok challenges, which I have curated, curated, curated from
my various news reading adventures. The penny challenge. Oh boy. Where do I start? So basically
in the penny challenge, you take a foe... Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, let me clarify something. Do not
try any of the challenges that you see in this video. I know most of you are intelligent enough
to not even want to try this stuff but every single challenge I'm about to go over is extremely
dumb, just beyond dumb, like mind-numbingly stupid. So please do not try this stuff.
But anyway, the pity challenge involves a phone charger and you basically take the phone charger
and you plug it in but not all the way and then you wedge a penny in there between the charger
and the electrical outlet in the hopes that you will create sparks. Now, I don't know about you,
but when I was a kid, heck I feel my whole childhood, my parents were telling me, "You
do not play around with the electrical outlets." Like, is that just me? Is that something we're
not doing with generation alpha? Because last time I checked, staying away from electrical
outlets was just common sense. But of course that didn't stop anyone and we got videos like this.
In here. No no no no.
In the hole at the top. From the top. I'm nobody's parent yet, but I'm just
trying to put myself in the headspace of if I walked in on my kid doing the pity challenge
for his TikTok, I think in that moment, I wouldn't be disappointed with the kid.
I would be angry and disappointed with myself because clearly I failed as not just a parent,
but a human being. So the way I discovered this TikTok challenge was via this article from this
local NBC station. And this article brings up a pretty good point, which I didn't think
about it's arson. According to Captain Jonathan Evans, with the Myrtle Beach Fire Department,
it's just arson. Basically what they're doing is starting a fire. Whether they think it's fun
or not, it's arson and that's a big penalty that could ruin their lives. Now that he mentions it,
if you are purposely trying to cause sparks then your pretty much purposely trying to start a fire.
In other words, this TikTok is literally illegal. Why the way the start? So of course it wouldn't be
the year 2020 if people didn't run into illegal challenges because of a TikTok. According to
the CNN article two, 15 year old boys are facing charges of attempted arson and malicious damage
to property under $1,200. And the reason for this is because they tried this at their school and so
authorities at the school found the electrical outlet and it was like burned and there was a
penny melted into it. So I guess the kids' parents are being charged for them destroying the outlet.
But everyone involved is really lucky. Those kids could have burned down that entire wall. In fact,
they could have burned down the entire school. So the fact that the damages
totaled under $1,200 and both of the kids made it out alive. It's a pretty big coincidence.
Fire Chief, Edward Bradley of the Plymouth Fire Department says, "I do think students comprehend
the reality that they can be electrocuted or start a fire. Parents need to talk to their
children and tell them if you see this stuff, don't try to imitate." It's scary to think
that the desire for TikTok clout could override the basic programming that every kid has, which
is not to stick metal objects near electrical outlets. So yeah, that's the penny challenge.
The flash challenge. So if the penny challenge was sticking a penny in the electrical socket,
then what does the flash challenge refer to? How about shining a bright light directly into your
eye with the intention of changing its color. Now, if that sounds insane to you, it's because
it is. Basically someone posted the TikTok to the platform where they claimed that if you shine your
camera phones flash into your eye and then put that video on TikTok and put the S5 filter over
it, then it will change the color of your eyes. Now I don't think I even have to explain why it's
a terrible idea to purposely shine light directly into your retinas but why would that stop anybody.
So like the others, I found out about this from an article. So yeah, apparently they started on
TikTok, but now it's making its way through Twitter, according to this Daily Dot article.
And people think that it's helping them find their true eye color in these TikToks(silence).
The camera flashes brighter than I remember. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch Ouch. Ouch.
Would you look at that, my eyes are still brown. Oh, the bleach challenge. Now this is a name that
I'm giving to it because it doesn't really have like a hashtag, but if shining light directly into
your eye, wasn't enough eye strain for you. How about the bleach challenge in which you mix leach,
jelly, hand sanitizer and the shaving cream in a plastic Ziploc bag and then hold it up directly to
your eye in the hopes that this will, you guessed it, change your eye color. Now, if you're hearing
this and you're thinking, Hmm, yeah, it will change your eye color to red because it will be
irritated. That is exactly what happened so much to where the person who created that original one
recorded a new one in which they showed that the original challenge caused them to get puffy eye.
So that little magic in the original video is just that it's edited. Obviously this is not
changing anybody's eye color. However, that didn't stop more people from doing this. So
the way I discovered this was actually via this Newsweek article and something really
disturbing popped out. So the person who originally posted this caption, according to
this Newsweek article is actually an adult. This article says that he's a college student. And so
he posted the original TikTok not the one where he admitted that it was fake with the caption,
"Tell me you guys used to do this to #foryoupage #viral #brighteyechallenge." You tried to tell
me that we have a fully grown man coming onto TikTok, app full of kids and trying to pass off,
putting in harsh chemicals near your eyes as some sort of challenge that everybody should be trying.
You know, it's one thing if kids are coming up with this, but if we have adults going onto
the platform and disseminating this dangerous stuff throughout the app full of kids, I mean,
you should just be ashamed of yourself or is it likes that you get on TikTok where if it
was that worth all those kids who wound up with puffy eyes? I sure hope it was, but yeah, that's
the bleach or the bright eye challenge. It's like, you couldn't even come up with a good name for it.
Oh me. Oh my, the cereal challenge. Just a bit of a warning. This one's really gross.
Basically involves two people and one person lays back on the platform like a counter or whatever
and this other person pours a bowl of cereal in that person's mouth and then begins to eat
it like this. Look, I don't care if we're in a committed relationship or not, I am not about
to eat cereal out of your mouth. Literally the most disgusting thing I've heard today anyway.
And it's gross enough with people doing this, but someone posted this one TikTok with a dog.
I care.I cut it off before it got really gross. But yes, it does keep going. And yes, it's exactly
what you think it was. So of course, again, I discovered this via this New York post article,
actually, you know what? This article actually brought up a really good point that I didn't
immediately consider this entire challenge is an enormous choking hazard. Like you are at an
angle with liquid just sitting in your mouth. If you make one wrong move, something is going to go
down the wrong pipe. In fact, this New York post article actually has one of the serial challenge
entries from Bretman Rock of all people. Oh my God.Oh my God Bretman
He tries to pass it off as a joke, but that is a really dangerous situation. Laying on your back
coughing up liquid? You know what, it seems like the lower your chances of survival are
for these TikTok challenges, the higher your chances of them going viral are. So if that's
not an indication that we just need to burn the entire app, I don't know what it is. And you know,
as much as I think Brentman Rock is kind of funny, I have a huge issue with doing stuff
like this to your giant audience and not disclosing at least at the very least how
dangerous it was and how much of a bad idea it was. But nevertheless, he can't pass up on
those hashtag serial challenge views, now can you. All right. So according to this USA Today article
which also briefly touches on the other challenges that we talked about, we have the soy sauce
challenge in which you dip... Hold up. You know what guys I think I'm done with this video. No,
but in all seriousness what's I guess the point of this challenge is that there are receptors
down there, but they're not taste receptors. So wait, what do the challenges look like?
Just went and got some soy sauce and we are going to do this little science experiment together
and don't be nasty in the comments. This is the human anatomy. Oh my God, I can taste this soy.
You know what, I don't think I want to talk about this challenge.All right, so
the last One I have up today is of course the plan B challenge also known as the morning after pill
challenge. Now, if you don't know what a plan B or the morning after pill is, I'm sure someone
in the comments will be happy to let you know, but basically this show started off innocently
enough in my opinion, someone just uploaded a TikTok of them dismantling a pregnancy(silence).
someone answered that it was a plan B pill. Now I can only assume that the people saying that we're
joking or at least I can hope that they were joking. But for some reason, people started
believing it, like, look at some of these TikToks. No, wait, there actually is... there is
a plan B pill. Oh my God. Are
you serious. Wow! Didn't believe it. I think the worst thing about it was that these
people weren't just saying, "Ooh, what's this," they were straight up just putting in the caption,
"Oh, hey, pregnancy tests have plan B pills in them." So I was alerted about this challenge
via this Daily Dot article and here's the thing. These plan B challenge videos were spreading so
far that Clear Blue, the company who manufactures those little pregnancy tests has to come out with
this statement, "Clear Blue pregnancy tests do not contain plan B pills. All our tests have a
small tablet, which is included to absorb moisture and should not be eaten. If accidentally ingested,
we ask people to please seek medical advice." So the thing is, it's dangerous on two levels,
right? To think, oh, I don't need a morning after pill because there's one in my pregnancy
test is obviously terrible. But then to encourage people to ingest things that
are not designed to be swallowed is just as bad. So yeah, the plan B test is just a grim reminder
of how quickly misinformation spreads on TikTok and among a demographic of people that are so
young and quick to believe everything that they see, it's a mess. So none of them brought up
these challenges. I just kind of went wrap it up by calling out TikTok for allowing this stuff to
happen in the first place. Now I am in no way suggesting that TikTok has a responsibility to
sensor the users on the platform. However, I absolutely believe there's nothing wrong
with disabling these hashtags. If you know that the penny challenge involves arson,
then maybe you would just disable the penny challenge hashtag that way those people
when they get views and they wouldn't have an incentive to start fires for TikTok, maybe you
could just put a little text box, "Hey, do not ingest these because they're not real pills."
Again, I don't think it's TikTok fault that these things started and that they were
spreading so quickly. But if it's gotten to the point where fire departments and pregnancy test
companies are releasing statements about this behavior, I really don't see why TikTok can't
at least contribute a little something here and there. But honestly, what would I expect from
what has to be the shadiest company in the entire world. In conclusion clout and kids
don't mix really and if you just put both of these elements in an uncontrolled environment,
I've a feeling arson is going to be the least of your problems. But I can't really say I'm
surprised. I mean, in previous years we've had this cinnamon challenge, the ice salt challenge,
we even had the fire challenge. It's just going to keep getting worse and worse and more and more
out of pocket until eventually we have, I don't know, the coronavirus challenge or something.
You just go pretend to have coronavirus in a public area. That can already be
real and a thing that somebody has tried, right? You know what, humanity is not really that great
anyway. So if we're all going to fall out the hands of TikTok challenges, honestly, who cares.