By: Phoebe Huang

Tik Tok, a short-form video app, has become a widely known app used by both teenagers and adults. Nowadays, people believe whatever they see online without second thought. The Tik Tok conspiracy theories serve as a perfect example of this.

A 32-second post opens with a dramatic black-and-white drawing of the Titanic and a synthesizer tune. A man green-screened into the frame makes an argument: “The Titanic NEVER actually sank.” He then provides a swap theory, stating, “The company that owned the Titanic was White Star Line. They also owned a ship called the Olympic, this ship’s exterior was nearly identical to the Titanic. The Olympic crashed into another ship, and became badly damaged.”

Now this is where the conspiracy begins. The Tik Tok claims that “because the ships looked identical, the company swapped them out. The Titanic would continue as the Olympic, and the Olympic would continue as the Titanic. The ‘Titanic’ would be in a planned accident, so they could collect insurance money.”

We can easily debunk this. Everything big enough that detaches from the ship has a number engraved on it, 400 for the Olympic and 401 for Titanic. The brass fittings have been found with 401 on Titanic’s wreck. There’s further evidence: the furniture on the ships were different. Not only would you have to swap every piece of furniture, but you’d also need to remove a giant part of the Titanic’s superstructure and integrate that onto the Olympic. At the same time, keeping the Titanic’s promenade completely open. They’d also need to fill in the names with steel and engrave the Olympic’s name on the Titanic, and the other way around. They would have to finish this in four months. Now that you think about it, this Tik Tok conspiracy theory doesn’t seem as real anymore.

Still, many people believed this hoax. It’s surprising but proves that people nowadays trust the information they find on social media and fall easily into dangerous traps. Tik Tok, which claims to have 150 million users and is popular with teens, has become a platform for misinformation and false claims.

“Our priority is to protect our community, which is why we remove misinformation that will cause significant harm and work with independent fact checkers to help assess the accuracy of content on our platform,” said Ben Rathe, a spokesman for TikTok. According to its guidelines, the company removes some videos with conspiracies like those about powerful groups that could potentially be offensive or start big controversies. But the app doesn’t block the fake conspiracies, which contradicts Rathe’s statement.

We shouldn’t let a Tik Tok video patch up the past, yet this particularly video shows the extent social media creators will go to for views. We should take everything we see and hear on the internet into consideration because it may result in serious consequences.