Roland Deschain
5:40:00 PM
TikTok is a total scourge
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WPRB News and Culture
Apr 21, 2025 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
News & Culture
The Pidgin brings you the latest stories from the Princeton community and beyond.
Brainrot
This week, The Pidgin is keeps its wits about it and takes on something that's been plaguing our online spaces, and our heads: brainrot. Mind-numbing and addictive, born on TikTok and leaking into real life, brainrot has come to be a quintessential part of contemporary culture. And we're turning it on its head. For our community section, Maggie Stewart turns the TikTok Rizz Party on all sides. She talks to sociologist Niobe Way, to Stanford psychologist Judy Chu, and to some of her own male friends, to understand what an internet phenomenon reveals about modern masculinity, and boyhood. Up next, in our culture section, reporters Martiza Roberts and Emilka Puchlaski go to an Everyone Asked About You Concert, and they get the feeling that emo isn’t dead, but concert etiquette might be. And for science, we stay on our social science kick, and we have WPRB usual suspect Margo Mattes interviews a sociologist from the Toronto Metropolitan University about the experiences of older adults with social media.
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Chat is archived.
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:46:56 PM
Lowkey yeah...
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:47:56 PM
But it's also very hard to avoid! And it's how many people find connection
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:48:34 PM
Is there anything about TikTok you would have liked The Pidgin to cover?
TAndy
5:49:58 PM
I really appreciated that first segment about hypermasculinity in young men, as someone who was a young man not too long ago. I've definitely noticed it becoming more noticed as the internet brings more things to the forefront. But as it was mentioned iirc, it's kinda just a part of growing up and it's possible to grow out of that sooner with the right role models.
Roland Deschain
5:50:50 PM
Can’t be understated how TikTok and Instagram and YouTube shorts and Facebook reels have all amalgamated into the same exact thing
TAndy
5:53:17 PM
I remember when all of those short form video formats were ridiculed and seen as ripoffs of Snapchat stories lol. Snapchat really set a lot of negative precedent for special media going forward, and I'm glad I deleted that app in 2017.
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:53:18 PM
Hi TAndy! We're so glad our first segment resonated with you!! The note Maggie ended on really stuck with me-- that young men are not broken, but the society they're growing up in has some catching up to do
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:54:44 PM
And yes, we've noticed that trend in short-form videos as well.. every big social media company has figured out that it keeps people engaged with their platforms
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:55:14 PM
Ohh, I think I was already off Snapchat in 2017, I didn't know that was the very first
Roland Deschain
5:56:51 PM
Maybe the luddites were right
TAndy
5:57:23 PM
That's such a poignant line to have ended the segment on, yes!
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:57:49 PM
oh, there was this great article in The New Yorker about the Luddite revolutions (although funnily enough, nobody knows exactly who Ludd was)
WPRB News and Culture (host)
5:58:17 PM
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/how-to-survive-the-ai-revolution
TAndy
5:58:22 PM
Well Snapchat's stories were first, but I believe musically (tiktok before the rebranding) was the first successful platform based entirely around short form videos in general along with Instagram reels.