The orange peel theory. The taxi cab theory. The 19 theory. The bean soup theory.
Whether it’s a questionable metaphor, obvious unspoken social rule, or pessimistic relationship test, TikTok cannot seem to resist the everpresent temptation to dub any thought “the ____ theory.”
Sure, it’s an ultimately harmless quirk. No one is truly getting hurt by this tendency, and it’s hardly important enough to warrant an article solely on the topic. However, the implications of this phenomenon are clear: TikTok has contributed to a generation where anyone can be an “expert” so long as they are able to think, post on TikTok, and—of course—post their thoughts on TikTok.
On an app where the lion’s share of content is less than a minute long, it’s no surprise that it’s a breeding ground for overconfidence. Of course TikTok users are plagued by the Dunning Kruger effect in droves, the app was practically designed to facilitate this.
The Dunning Kruger effect is the social phenomena wherein a person who knows relatively little about a topic will consider themselves as knowing more than they truly do because they lack sufficient knowledge to understand the breadth and depth of the information they lack. A short form media machine like TikTok is the perfect opportunity for this effect to take root because the obvious lack of nuance possible within a sub-minute post will give audiences a false notion of expertise. It’s near impossible to learn how much you don’t know through this type of short-form content; as long as a person is unaware of how much knowledge they lack, they gain the impression that they know enough—more than the average person. Enough to make them an expert.
TikTok is a farmhouse of “experts” who know nothing about their fields of “expertise.” Though TikTok admittedly provides information to users (albeit in extremely varied levels of reliability and expertise), it can just as easily delude people into over-inflating their perceived amount of knowledge on any given topic.
If TikTok does eventually become banned in the United States, many may be saying goodbye to internet “edits” of their favorite show characters and saved recipes from fellow TikTok users. As for me, I plan to leave a lily at the grave of the countless TikTok theories that I have become an expert on.
Photo Credit: Harvard Law School
