There was a movie back in 2013, called The Purge, set in a fictional, near-future America where crime has been largely stamped out -- except on a national holiday, also called the Purge, where all crime is legal for 12 hours.
The movie must have done well enough. It has so far spawned three sequels, with a fourth scheduled for release this Summer, according to IMDb.com. A television show, based on the same detestable concept, ran for a couple of seasons on cable.
Clearly, the idea of all crime being made "legal" for a limited period of time is so obviously ridiculous that no one would ever take it seriously, right?
Wrong.
I won't name the teacher or the school, but I heard from a junior high teacher yesterday whose homeroom was greatly agitated about "National Rape Day," supposedly set for this Friday, April 24. On that one day, according to the frightened students, rape would be "legal."
The teacher tried to explain that there is no such "holiday," that rape is never legal, and will not be made legal on Friday.
But the students were unconvinced. There were warnings all over TikTok, they said, so it must be true.
And the students were not entirely wrong -- there were warnings all over TikTok.
Internet watchdog Snopes.com put up a post about this subject on April 19. The post, by Dan Evon, links to a single Tik Tok video from @la.tania.ftn2 that was viewed 1.5 million times between its posting on April 17 and the April 19 publication of the Snopes.com post. An excerpt from that TikTok post, as quoted by Snopes.com:
I just saw a video on tiktok and i had to make a video myself … because I need to make sure that you guys are aware that there’s a video going around Tiktok of disgusting men … and they literally came up with a date to go around and rape women and children.
Except... Snopes.com can't find the video that supposedly prompted this reaction. According to Snopes.com's post, TikTok can't find such a post either. USA Today published a "fact check," by Devon Link, on April 19 (updated on April 20) that likewise came up empty in a search for the video that allegedly precipited the many warning videos:
Millions of social media users have viewed or shared reactions to the perceived threat on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. However, neither USA TODAY nor TikTok could find any evidence of the threat users were responding to.
And, yet, according to the USA Today fact check, there were more than 31.1 million views and more than a thousand videos using the #april24 hashtag. Quoting further from the USA Today post, "According to CrowdTangle, there have more than 1,000 Facebook posts and nearly 50 Instagram posts about 'National Rape Day' in the week before this fact check published."
USA Today tried to reach out to the TikTok 'creators' who spread these warnings. None responded. While some of the creators claim to have seen the video announcing the 'holiday,' none, according to USA Today, shared that link, or stitched it, or dueted it. I don't know what those last two terms mean -- but it does certainly seem reasonable to conclude that the threat was largely, if not entirely, made up.
Snopes.com unearthed archived pages on Urban Dictionary which suggested that someone had proposed a National Rape Day as early as 2018. But it didn't go viral until the condemnations of an apparently non-existent video began circulating.
So there is no "National Rape Day" Friday or any other day, ever. But April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Wikipedia says the month has been observed since at least 2001. President Obama proclaimed April as National Sexual Awareness Month in April 2010.
The Internet has many uses, and the ability to rapidly---almost instantly---share information can be one of the most beneficial.
But only if the information is accurate.
And figuring out what is, or is apparently, accurate information is increasingly difficult for all of us. Especially where information, and misinformation, is surging through channels of which we may not even be aware.
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