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Are There Really 'Five TikTok Dances You Can Do To Help'? A Widespread Image Debunked
Social media has long been criticized for promoting a kind of slacktivism where politically conscientious but physically lazy users can do something symbolic but ultimately meaningless to show they support a cause — think overlaying your Facebook profile picture with a semi-opaque French flag or dumping ice water on yourself. That's why a headline reading, "Here's 5 TikTok Dances You Can Do To Help [Palestine/Ukraine/Israel etc.]" seems so believable, even though, thankfully, it's not real.
Where Did "Here's 5 TikTok Dances You Can To To Help" Come From?
On March 5th, 2022, a little-known satire site called Cinch News posted a headline that read, "Here’s 5 Tik-Tok dances you can do to help Ukraine fight Russia."
Given the political climate during the outset of the Russia / Ukraine war, plus the general moral panic about Zoomers on TikTok, it seems by itself just plausible enough to have been written in earnest. However, the "game" of the satire is given away in the piece's first sentence, which reads, "As Ukraine repels the Russian invasion, many influencers and social media stars are wondering how they can make this about them."
How Did The Headline Spread So Widely If It's Fake?
A simple bit of editing allowed people to grab the headline and pass it off as a genuine news article. Three days after it was posted, Twitter account @ManMilk2 deleted "Cinch News" from the screenshot of the headline, and passed it off as real, tweeting "Wtf?" and gaining tens of thousands of retweets and likes.
Memers began spreading it uncritically as well, holding up the headline as an example of a broken society, never once acknowledging that the article was a joke.
The meme still gets play today. On October 11th, Twitter user @SonicAids updated the meme to be about the Israel / Hamas conflict, introducing a new batch of social media users to a hoax that's been running for eighteen months.
For more information, check out the "Here's 5 TikTok Dances You Can Do to Help" entry on Know Your Meme.
