TikTok is poison for the mind.
Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for TikTok clout
Submitted 1 week ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
sheogorath@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It literally shrinks your brain with excessive usage.
DarkWinterNights@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Nearly 20 years ago, I was in a computer programming class surrounded by clunky towers and desktops.
Suddenly, a loud popping, then one of the machines starts belching smoke like a budget fog machine. The kid using it is calmly moved to another station while the prof investigates.
Fifteen minutes later - pop. Smoke again.
Turns out the kid was jamming a paperclip into the power supply like he was playing Operation: Arson Edition.
That was his last day.
On the bright side, computers are a lot cheaper now - and kids are still dumb. So, progress?
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 1 week ago
This seems like something they should have engineered out of a product primarily used by schoolchildren.
itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Engineer out the electricity?
mhague@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I have the same memory, except the teacher would just pop his head out from the office and tell us to knock it off. Someone managed to draw a giant line of Axe spray across the electronics desk/counter things and made a massive fireball. Nobody really got in trouble in that class.
unphazed@lemmy.world 1 week ago
We just pulled stupid pranks, like setting a repeating function with sound at the highest frequency in BASIC and locking the machines… on all the computers.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 week ago
My cousin actually set his bedroom on fire doing something very similar with the foil from chewing gum. This was in the 1980s though so no one really cared, I’m pretty sure he just got shouted at.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I remain utterly convinced that Tiktok is nothing but a chinese psyop experiment to see how far they can manipulate people into actions that would otherwise be prevented by our brains screaming in self preservation.
Has there ever been a “good” trend on tiktok? Every week its just another destructive thing that gullible idiots are being tricked into doing.
RangerJosey@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Soon as Chump took office the moderation flipped. It was open and handled well. Now if you call a corrupt politician an asshole you get a violation.
Talk about Palestine get a violation. Critical of the Chump regime get a violation.
Chow somehow inserted himself fully up Chumps ass on like Jan 22. TT hasn’t been the same since.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 week ago
TikTok always favored Trump because China always favored Trump and TikTok is operated by Chinese Military directly out of Chinese servers which also store location data, contacts, text message history, and photo library of every device which has ever installed TikTok.
It’s a weapon to be used against the US now and since always.
endeavor@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
We skipped our 3310s down the road Infront of our school without tiktok brainrot. Kids today need chinese to tell them to be stupid. Back in our day, we were stupid on our own!
dajoho@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Was the road ok?
Iceman@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah, this is yous lemmitors being conspiracy poisoned by the internet.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
back in our day, our stupid wasnt malicious mass destruction or food tampering.
It was actual stupid shit, like trying to jump over your friend as he raced towards you on his bike, or falling off a roof, Shit that only hurt yourself, if anyone. Wasnt breaking and entering, wasnt destroying shit. wasnt anything like that.
T156@lemmy.world 1 week ago
People have just been doing dumb things for reputation since forever. We had the cinnamon challenge back in our day.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
yeah, the cinnamon challenge was dumb… but it didnt involve mass destruction, psychotic behavor, or contaminating food\ in stores.
So its hardly comparable.
SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Sees teenagers doing dumb shit, like they have since literally forever
“Is this a plot by the despotic orientals?!”
Fucking listen to yourself. I’m not on TikTok. I just don’t care for vertical short-form video as a concept. But even I can tell you that not every TikTok trend is teenagers being destructive idiots.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
oh wow the .ml user is getting super offended over criticism of china/russia.
how original
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 week ago
Has there ever been a “good” trend on tiktok?
The ice bucket challenge was making rounds again. But there’s basically infinite harmless trends that nobody thinks of. The 100 men versus 1 gorilla thing is a trend and unless somebody jumps in a gorilla pen for Harambe 2.0 it’s been harmless.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
My question was “was there ever a good trend from tiktok”
Icebucket challenge was from before tiktok existed.
So kinda proving my point.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I agree. I was exposed to a lot of leftist content on tiktok and it’s made me want to protest. Good thing you explained that it’s stupid.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 week ago
grahamja@reddthat.com 1 week ago
It’s curated to cause problems, I wouldn’t believe anything otherwise. Douyin which is the Chinese version shows completely different content, including government narratives. Tiktok is straight brain rot, and I believe it’s curated to encourage poor behavior in users outside of China.
lowered_lifted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Accurate username
MS06Borjarnon@lemmy.world 1 week ago
[deleted]KeenFlame@feddit.nu 1 week ago
Yeah because usa needs help destroying their youth
gradual@lemmings.world 1 week ago
Obligatory “China hate” comment missing the forest for the trees.
Norin@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Youthful rebellion transcends technology.
Is there much difference between this and, say, using a pen to drill a hole in your desk?
SaltSong@startrek.website 1 week ago
Desks are cheaper, and the hole only slightly impairs functionality.
TryingToActHuman@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’m not so sure about cheaper. A quick google search shows the desks I used in school are priced around $400-$600 depending on type (different subjects had different desks), whereas the Chromebooks are around $250. I definitely agree with your second point, though.
ililiililiililiilili@lemm.ee 1 week ago
They also don’t release magic smoke. All my homies hate vandalizing desks.
IMongoose@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Pen is less likely to start a fire and or create toxic smoke.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
I’ve never done that either. The fuck? did you eat paint as a kid?
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 1 week ago
We did it for the love of the game and not to impress strangers
magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
Bullahut you did it to impress the other nosepickers, same reason these kids are doing it.
kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Thank you, it’s relieving to see that some people don’t fall for the “kids today” bullshit
hoch@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Drilling a hole in your desk doesn’t lead to cancer.
chunes@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I wish we lived in a world where they’re doing it because they don’t want locked-down toys issued by an evil corporation. But of course that’s not the reason.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system.
I am rather surprised that works. I thought any modern device would have overload protection in place. I think I even remember accidentally tripping it on some device, but it would just reset after reboot.
I also tried to see the max output current of my previous phone this way. Load it up till the protection trips. Result: Stable up to 2.1A, tripped at 2.5A.Oh, yeah. A Xiaomi phone charger I have also shuts down if I either overload it or immediately load it near max rating rather than gradually increase the load.
Bezier@suppo.fi 1 week ago
Aren’t the families responsible for the damages?
jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Perhaps it’s more like “Kids short-circuiting school issued chromebooks because of excessive surveillance.”
…but probably not (or at least, not entirely) because many kids are dumb.
source: was a dumb kid.
veeesix@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
It’d be a crying shame if the students were required to complete the school year with physical books and a notebook.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Well, maybe a school-issued computer should be designed differently than a consumer device.
Maybe such things should be considered beforehand.
In industrial ergonomics you are supposed to, ideally, present a worker with a few buttons with abundantly clear results of pressing them and no forbidden combinations leading to unexpected\undefined\dangerous results.
Kids sticking things into what’s given to them are not an unexpected event. I’d say kids doing that are better than kids not doing that. And if it’s expected, then this is almost entrapment.
Oh, oh, OH, you can’t just put a consumer device with a web browser with Google and MS and Apple shit into schools then? No kickbacks from those companies? So fucking sad.
Forcing a kid to wear around a centrally managed device with a microphone and a camera makes me want to vomit. That should be illegal as many other things. It’s a disgusting world.
These should be military-level (by resilience to attempts to throw them out of the window, sink them in the water, overheat them and so on) devices with something like FreeDOS+OpenGEM. That’s by far enough to run school programs. If you think it’s not, then you are possessed by collective delusions, that’s a thing in crowd psychology, so drink a glass of water, listen to cars\birds, look at the sky and answer which fundamentally new tasks you need to solve as compared to having year 1999 Internet (as in open a static webpage, follow links, send forms), WordPerfect and Basic. Especially at school.
We use axes, knives, hammers and screwdrivers and other stuff to do things, more or less as they existed 300 years ago, when we are not professionals, who of course use power tools.
potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish 1 week ago
Not even that bad, they are learning about electricity in a hands-on manner. USB standards protect against short circuits so this is over exaggerated heavily.
Ryick@lemm.ee 1 week ago
If this were an unbiased and honest article; then it would read “Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for social clout.” The subtle message, in this article, is TikTok = bad, which is illogical because events such as this will occur regardless of platform or even lack of a platform. It will ALWAYS happen. The question is how to mitigate these events as much as possible, because it’s impossible to completely eradicate “kids doing X for social clout.” It’s a part of learning and being human.
FireWire400@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Oh man, first planking, then breaking into cars and now this. What’s next; just shooting yourself with a rifle and who survives wins? Darwinism is real.
Google didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.
To be fair, I don’t really see why they should. Chances are they didn’t factor in that level of stupidity when designing those things.
jpablo68@infosec.pub 1 week ago
How about the “graduate from highschool challenge”?
guyoverthere123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
the worst part is expecting kids to learn about computers using a fucking Chromebook.
midori_matcha@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Why throw the kids in the slammer? So they can eventually come back out as hardened criminals and contribute to the recidivism statistics, further circling society down the drain because they were betrayed by the corporations that injected their explosive products into our tax-funded school systems? They should give the TikTok kids full STEM scholarships for exposing these dangerous design flaws!
Hold the Chromebook manufacturer liable for the unsafe hardware design flaw with no overcurrent protection, hold the school liable for recklessly issuing these dangerous laptops that cheaped out on safety features, and hold Google liable for neglecting power handling in their Chromebook software! Get the CPSC on the phone and get every single Flamebook recalled across the nation!
It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous!
KelvarIW@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
As I age I find myself feeling more and more like the cool step-dad or uncle.
Y’know I hate everything Chromebooks stand for. “You get 'em, kid. Now how about we get some pizza?”
Wildfire0Straggler3@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Fuck chromebooks anyways, Google shouldn’t be allowed to steal so much information about our youth directly from the devices they use at school. They should be using laptops with Linux installed on them, preferably Pop!_OS to preserve the kids privacy.
I don’t condone damaging school property, although I think it’s a lesser evil to Google’s privacy practices on Chromebooks.
ProfHillbilly@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I was dealing with this all last week till finally a kid did it and his battery melted the computer in my classroom. He was told multiple times not to do it so now he is getting charged with possible arson. I have dealt with him doing stupid shit for the past 3 years and now finally the admins do something because it was so outlandishly stupid they have to. I am so glad I am retiring in less than 20 days.
frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Parents and psychiatrists have been trying to wrap their heads around how some of the more dangerous Internet trends take off, especially among kids.
Kids are dumb and they do dumb things. There’s not really that much to wrap one’s head around.
ulterno@programming.dev 1 week ago
So you mean there are laptop USB ports out there without current limiters?
I would want to check my PC’s ports, but I am not filthy rich, so I’ll just assume stuff is not current limited.ephrin@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Just got a notification about this from my kids school district in Northern CA.
RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
Wouldn’t the port get shutdown/disabled if you try to overload it?
Wanderer@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Man I feel like a large part of the internet is out of reach.
Why have I got to sign up for tiktok just to watch this happen?
Shit like this used to be easily finable on google or something. Now I can’t seem to find shit. All I get get in news articles about it.
Fleur_@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Man I’m so sorry to my highschool Chromebook. They gave me that shit in yr seven and I was incapable of keeping things in one piece at that age. I think every key had been taken off by the end of the year and there were several holes in the outer casing.
TomMasz@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Behold the next generation of voters.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Incredibly this makes me miss when people pretended to slip and fall at the grocery store so they could throw milk jugs in the air and make a mess.
asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 1 week ago
What does “clout” mean?
macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Good, chromebooks suck.
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I don’t get it. I was never this stupid as a kid.
WhiteRice@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Are you sure? Kids are pretty stupid.
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I never intentionally destroyed expensive electronics to “try to impress” anyone in real life, let alone online (although that didn’t quite exist yet).
So, yeah, I’m sure.
peregrin5@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I used to be a teacher in the 2010s. I remember boys having this ghost pepper challenge they would do that would put them in literal tears.
I never stopped them. Some just have to learn through experience that being an idiot to impress your buds isn’t going to result in a good time for you.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That’s, like, a normal logical one. It’s actually food, it’s spicy. It makes sense to compete to see who can handle the spicy food.
Stealing faucets from public bathrooms? That’s not a normal logical one. That’s a devious lick, and something invented to be highly memetic and propelled by a highly optimized algorithm that incentivizes recency, novelty, and dopamine hacking. It even had a marketing/brand name!
Bezier@suppo.fi 1 week ago
Eating a spicy pepper is just harmless fun. I’d join in that activity today.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I defend that one, it’s just challenging yourself, no harm to anyone else or any property, almost no danger of medical harm. What’s the harm in letting them embarrass themselves for the right to claim they did something others couldn’t?
gradual@lemmings.world 1 week ago
I’ve done something similar and it was completely harmless and only served as good entertainment for everyone involved.
sexy_peach@feddit.org 1 week ago
I was pretty stupid
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Same, but I had classmates who were.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You didn’t have the same social and monetary incentives TikTok provides.
rabber@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I was. When the bell would ring and the halls were hectic I would put popcorn in the communal microwave and put like 20 min and leave and sometimes nobody would notice till it catches fire
I almost burned down the school a couple times
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Hopefully you’re less of a piece of shit now
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I was a victim of this prank in college. We were on a road trip, sleeping in a lounge at another school and were awakened by a fire alarm. Somehow while we were sleeping a toaster with broken spring appeared on a table, filled with bread we didn’t have
After the fact, I realized I was probably explaining the situation to the perpetrators, but I don’t know if my annoyance at stupid prank was still amusing. They did keep straight faces
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Most of us were differently stupid, only because we didn’t have access to other people’s stupid ideas.
My worst moment of stupidity was lighting off fireworks in a barn full of dry hay. That could have gone so much worse than just ruining some cheap disposable electronics
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Some of my shenanigans definitely involved breaking electronics
gradual@lemmings.world 1 week ago
Same. To me, messing with a computer seemed like a great way to be on the hook for destruction of school property.
Lol, good point. I often forget how I was put in advanced classes at an early age with other students who performed well. I need to consider that more in my adult life, that most of the adults I’m encountering were the people in the regular classes.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Ditto. I grew up helping fix VCR by replacing displaced bands and gears. I knew to be careful not the let the magic smoke come out. Bad genie!