A disturbing new trend of TikTok users pretending to be Holocaust victims has drawn ire on social media. The trend – dubbed "trauma porn" – left several social media users in disbelief with some slamming it as "disgusting."
In the videos, TikTok users applied makeup to mimic wounds and burns of Holocaust victims and explained that they were "taken away" by Nazis and sent to concentration camps – especially Auschwitz in Poland, where over million Jews were killed. The short videos had dramatic background music score and some users even wore the Star of David on their clothing to make it gory.
Urging People to Not to Trivialize Holocaust
A 19-year-old Jewish woman, identified as Briana, posted a Twitter thread documenting the TikTok videos and urging users to stop pretending to be Holocaust victims as it trivialized their memory. Briana, who is from Los Angeles, reportedly lost family members in the Holocaust.
Briana's caption, documenting the TikTok videos, read: "@tiktok_us did these girls really cosplay a holocaust victim and narrative for a tik tok.. such a callous mockery of the genocide of millions of jews and other marginalized groups, i feel sick #Holocaust #tiktok #holocaustchallenge"
Users Defend Their Actions
A 17-year-old girl from New Jersey, who was not identified, was one such TikTok users who cosplayed as a Holocaust victim. She defended her actions by saying that she wanted to "educate people" about the genocide. However, she removed her video from the video-sharing platform later.
"I've always been interested in the history of the Holocaust and just wanted to make a creative video informing people about it on TikTok," she told Insider. "It was never intended to be offensive."
Briana told Wired that TikTok should monitor its content so as not to offend any group. "TikTok needs to instill better report evaluation teams and change what is allowed to be uploaded in terms of misinformation and hateful or ignorant content," she said. TikTok reportedly evaluated the Holocaust video and decided not to remove them because they did not violate the company's community guidelines.
