I don't want to take away from anything else you've said because I mostly agree but this "Viral TikTok Trend" was not viral nor big. I would be careful fearmongering when this micro-trend that died almost as fast as it was found is essentially the same as an over-reported and exaggerated 4chan exposé.

I don't think anything in my mention of it blew it out of proportion. FWIW, my wife is in the IT department of a school district and this was a major issue for them, nearly every one of their 60-some-odd campuses had at least one incident caused by this trend. Sure, it was short-lived, but it was also very widespread and affected even private/charter schools in well-to-do areas like what my wife works at, not just public schools.

Me mentioning this trend was more to point out that my larger point was much more subtle and nuanced than "Facebook causes burglaries", but that also absolutely crime has been done in some circumstances directly because of social media trends.

Part of my concern about social media is that people with low levels of self-respect and self-reliance are also more generally likely to follow trends... while we're back on the topic of "devious licks" specifically:

"In March 2022, The Washington Post revealed that the devious lick challenge was utilized as part of an orchestrated campaign by Meta Platforms and Republican consulting firm Targeted Victory to damage TikTok's public reputation.[14]"

So, here's one social media company that knows from their own data how influential social media is on society using that knowledge to intentionally cause social harm to damage the reputation of another social media company, by using how people are willing to follow trends when they have low self-respect and self-reliance.

These are the times we live in, and I think being dismissive of this as the original respondent to my first comment was, by essentially saying that pointing this out is "old man yells at cloud" is not a productive way to resolve the difficulties society is facing and will continue to face due to social media and the larger issue of increased mental health issues and reduced self-respect and self-reliance in society.

First, obviously I agree that crime can be influenced by social media trends.

Second, I'm sorry for sounding dismissive of something that most likely directly affected you. I'm trying to argue that I believe your larger point is wrong. I'm contributing to your additive that goes farther than "Facebook causes burglaries."

You're blaming the people equally or more than the organizations. You're saying that children's behavior has changed thus allowing more people to be manipulated in this way, where I'm saying the tools organizations now have to cause harm is a more important callout than pontificating about self-respect/reliance. If TikTok was, for example, invented in the 70's, and your theory of a shift in self-reliance is correct, it's incredibly likely the same thing would have happened anyway regardless of how much self-respect children had back then in comparison.

That being said, I think talking about a shift in self-respect is in interesting conversation, albeit crotchety. I will say that I believe every generation feels this way about younger generations. It's also incredibly easy to have self-respect driven by pride which is it's own problem.

Edit: You were saying someone else was being dismissive, my fault.

A few things to unpack and respond to here.

> Second, I'm not being dismissive

Agreed, I was referring to the response up thread by @dymk.

> If TikTok was, for example, invented in the 70's, and your theory of a shift in self-reliance is correct, it's incredibly likely the same thing would have happened anyway regardless of how much self-respect children had back then in comparison.

This is possibly true. I'll allow for the fact I am probably over emphasizing one aspect of a larger social shift that is probably driven by something multi-faceted. My basic hypothesis for this sub-discussion, is that someone with self-respect wouldn't put themselves on social media the way people do with TikTok in the first place. The people I interact with (regardless of age) who spend most of their time creating, producing, and doing, and have high levels of self-esteem don't spend very much time on social media pandering for imaginary points and validation from strangers, because they have no need of any such validation from strangers due to their self-esteem and self-respect.

> That being said, I think talking about a shift in self-respect is in interesting conversation, albeit crotchety. I will say that I believe every generation feels this way about younger generations. It's also incredibly easy to have self-respect driven by pride which is it's own problem.

Yes, I'd like to delve into this deeper. I want to clarify that I don't think this is necessarily generational. I'm an older Millennial / Xennial, and I've definitely seen the lack of self-respect in people in Gen X, as well as folks in my age cohort. This is not me saying "those damn kids and their TikTok", it's me saying that we have a widespread problem within our society, which is not caused by social media, but is greatly exacerbated by it and likely to some degree spread/communicated by it.

The lack of self-respect and self-esteem began before social media rose to popularity, it's simply that social media has provided broad interconnection between people and a way to create and drive trends, as well as the most likely effects it has on mental health itself. If you think of lacking self-esteem or self-respect as a piece of mental health, this is most likely inter-related to the larger trend towards worsening mental health in the Western world. This effect cuts across age groups, class, wealth, and other demographics, so it's definitely not something generationally restricted, nor is it something that only happens to poor people. To no small degree, that's kind of the thrust of my original comment, which is that crime is on the rise in wealthier parts of communities/cities/country, when historically those were areas nearly fully insulated from criminality. Crime is a symptom, in my mind, of a shift in social mores, self-respect, and mental health.

I see, so you're saying that social media is exacerbating an already moving shift.

Crime on the rise in insulated communities could be a statement from those fed up. It could be a deterioration of mental health conditions. It could also be that we're growing and growing in population and getting ever closer in proximity to each other making it impossible to insulate physically. It's probably all of those things and more but I'm on your side now.

>I'm an older Millennial / Xennial, and I've definitely seen the lack of self-respect in people in Gen X, as well as folks in my age cohort. This is not me saying "those damn kids and their TikTok",

Yes and I don't think pointing out a shift in "fuck you behavior" is crotchety, I just thought that the specific example was not up to par because it didn't show a reflection of that shift. I've had poor and wealthy classmates do all of those things in the past and have heard stories from grandparents exhibiting the same behavior in that age group.

>The people I interact with (regardless of age) who spend most of their time creating, producing, and doing, and have high levels of self-esteem don't spend very much time on social media pandering for imaginary points and validation from strangers, because they have no need of any such validation from strangers due to their self-esteem and self-respect.

That is your microcosm, and it sounds like a good one. Most creators, producers, doers that exist, live for attention and validation.

>Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce the law.

Police in poor cities have never had enough enforcement resources to do anything other than write a report for petty crime yet you don't see the nearly amount of videos of brazen "petty crime in broad daylight while witnesses film" coming out of Detroit or Trenton like you do the richer cities.

The problem is largely cultural and it largely begins and ends with the demographics who drive things like local police policy.

You're correct in your first paragraph and probably a quarter correct in your second paragraph. Just to be a bit more deliberate: poor communities have experienced high rates of crime throughout human history, it's a newly recurring phenomenon that high rates of crime are now happening in communities which are not poor, and it's a problematic sign for society. Without trying to crack open the entirety of human psychology and sociology in a comment on HN, a lot of people primarily gather wealth to build safety for their family, the entire reason that they become wealthier is to insulate themselves from the criminality that is common in poorer parts of their city/country/world. The fact that relative wealth is no longer as insulative as it once was is indicative of a wider ranging issue than poverty driving crime, and results in subtle shifts and cracks forming in society.

There are absolutely cultural drivers behind crime, as well as demographic drivers, and I am positing that a big piece of what's causing criminal culture to spread and shift is social media acting as a communications platform to spread a different set of social mores and standards than those that have historically enforced cohesion within larger society and reduced criminality in wealthier areas. Again, case in point, children of wealthy families in posh schools engaging in vandalize and theft of school property for social media points. Social media is nothing if not a cultural force that creates a new demographic that cuts across other lines, their user-base.

Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as it once was against crime?

What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it but also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if we were forced to make communal change instead of buying our way out?

Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity, whether for social media points or other variations of clout.

> Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as it once was against crime?

I think it depends on social context, but at least in the US, and I would suspect in much of the West generally, people work to acquire wealth primarily to better the lives of themselves and their family, and a big portion of that is where they live (e.g. a home purchase is usually the largest purchase in any person's life). Given that, if you cannot reliably buy a home in a safe place, it leads to significant increased risk for productive members of society and general breakdowns in social cohesion. I don't want to be that guy, but I see parallels between our current zeitgeist and the fall of the Roman Empire.

> What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it but also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if we were forced to make communal change instead of buying our way out?

"Buying your way out" is a form of communal change, it's literally the basis of suburban living, HOAs, inner-metro townships & associated township policing, et al. I don't know of anyone who "wants wealth but can't acquire it", I know of many people that want some subset of what wealth might bring and are unwilling to do the things necessary to acquire what they want. Unwillingness and inability are not the same, nor is materialism and safety/piece and quiet.

> Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity, whether for social media points or other variations of clout.

Yes, anti-social behavior is part of the human condition, but generally speaking is confined in some way except in times of social strife and turmoil. By most metrics this is not a time of social strife and turmoil, but we are seeing a rise in anti-social behavior that would indicate that it is.