what's pleasure without pain?

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark — “On the Web”

Hello!

I wish I had more resources that concisely express what I'm trying to convey because I've mainly just seen discourse about it on Twitter and I'm not always the best at expressing my more nuanced takes.

First, I want to acknowledge that after doing more research on my own, it looks like "learned helplessness" in regards to TikTok isn't specified to the actual psychological term, but just to the nature of TikTok users themselves.

I'm not actively on Twitter anymore, so while there's a few Twitter threads that discuss this, I don't know if I'll be able to find readily find them.

That said, a thread I remember seeing that discussed the nature of TikTok users and they're habit of just, I don't know, not wanting to know how to do things was in the parameters of making a pizza.

There was this user who came across a TikTok of a cooking account making a sausage pizza for dinner and comments were asking things like: "What if you don't like sausage, can I use pepperoni?" or "Do we have to include green pepper if we don't want to?"

There was another video that went viral a couple of months ago where this woman made a Bean Soup. It was a simple, straightforward recipe but all of the comments were asking, "well what if you don't like kale?" "what if you don't like chicken broth" or, the kicker, "what if you don't like beans?"

This TikTok about that, which is comedic, actually points out just how frequent this type of thing is because we're seeing it more and more.

Basically, there's this uptick of users who rob themselves of their own agency, probably without even knowing it, and then request the rest of the platform to hold their hand through everything.

I'm a little more sympathetic if they're actual children (who I really don't think should even be on the app) but, that's pretty much where my sympathy ends.

There's been some discussion around people using TikTok as a search engine as opposed to Google (a search engine that isn't without fault) and because of that, they simply don't understand how to look stuff up anymore.

They'll look something up on TikTok, or just come across a video, and then take the video at face value and assume that the information begins and ends with that specific TikTok (which is concerning because they're so much misinformation that's spreading around TikTok)

A good example was someone telling another user that "Gigi Hadid's famous pasta recipe"' was just the recipe for Penne Alla Vodka, a very common, very well known Italian dish. They were then asked for a "source?" and it's like literally 1980s Italy - it's not that hard to find.

So yeah, when I see things like "Can you use Olive Oil for cooking?" and "How do we get into this music?" I'm stuck thinking people simply don't know how to do anything to help themselves, and overall, it's a tad bit concerning.

It's also why I hate the "girlsplaining" trend that's happening right now where "bimbo" influencers repackage world affairs and present in a way that's "for the girls".

Why are you asking someone who has "bimbo university" and has clearly woefully missed the point of Legally Blonde about what's going on between Israel and Palestine as opposed to just picking up a book?