On TikTok, the world’s most famous shipping tragedy never happened. Or, in the words of one conspiracy theorist: “The Titanic never actually sank.”
During this half-minute video a man, wearing a hoodie and his baseball cap backwards, peddles a favourite theory: that the Titanic was actually replaced with its sister ship, the Olympic, as part of an elaborate insurance scam.
Another TikTok video where someone says the Titanic never sank was seen 11-million times earlier this year before it was removed.
Yet another conspiracy theory is that the sinking was a “hit job” by financier JP Morgan to eliminate opponents of the US Federal Reserve, according to a New York Times article on TikTok Titanic conspiracy theories.
It’s easy to forget conspiracy theorists have time to waste on such lesser-known irrationalities, but 11-million views proves how viral such misinformation can be.
While rational people tend to roll their eyes at people dof enough to believe such drivel, the appearance of this kind of disinformation content on social platforms frequented by teenagers is worrying.
It’s where youngsters go for entertainment in this post-linear television age, saturated by streaming content — especially the short-form video, of which TikTok has become the biggest proponent.
If you repeat something baseless often enough, it appears to become real. Former US president Donald Trump demonstrated this with incorrect statements about Barack Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii.
“Fundamentally, a 14-year-old is probably taught at school that the Earth is round and probably believes it, but with the frequency of watching videos over and over, they start questioning it,” Helen Lee Bouygues, who started the Paris-based nonprofit Reboot Foundation to help fight misinformation, told The New York Times.
“The longer young adults are on TikTok, the more ... they believe what they see,” she said.
The longer young adults are on TikTok, the more ... they believe what they see
— Helen Lee Bouygues
TikTok differs from Twitter and Facebook, which have traditionally shown content somehow related to who you follow. TikTok shows you what is trending and whatever you engage with.
“If someone is spending time on a video, it doesn’t matter if they really believe JP Morgan sank the Titanic, or if they believe, hey, this is a funny video, someone is talking about JP Morgan sinking the Titanic,” Megan Brown, a senior research engineer at New York University’s Center for Social Media & Politics, told The New York Times. “This is the same signal as far as TikTok is concerned, so they recommend more of that content.”
This is how truth gets eroded, she said, while “people who believe in at least one conspiracy theory tend to believe in at least more than one”.
While The New York Times bemoans the decline in “proficiency in US history” in its education system, it’s arguably worse in South Africa, where our own teacher union-dominated schooling renders our children unable to read for meaning.
Where do young people — already living in an age of streaming video on phones as the default entertainment — go when they can’t read? TikTok’s short videos find fertile ground in these impressionable young minds, whether the content is real or fake.
Be afraid.
*Shapshak is editor-in-chief of Stuff.co.za and executive director of Scrolla.Africa
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.