TikTok Trends 24 April: A highly unsettling fad that went viral on TikTok in 2021 is only vaguely known. As a result of the trend, April 24—which is ostensibly Sexual Assault Awareness Month—was unofficially declared “National Rape Day.”
A group of males are allegedly seen in a video encouraging others to commit sexual assault on this day by asserting that doing so is legal on the Chinese video hosting service TikTok.
april 24 trend on tiktokHowever, TikTok acknowledged that it has not discovered the alleged original video on its platform in a message to the media outlet USA Today.
The original video’s existence is unknown, however the hashtag #April24 appears to have received 38 million views altogether.
Hundreds of more TikTok videos were produced by netizens in response to the craze.
Some of these reply videos gave ladies safety tips. Women were urged to exercise caution and stay in on April 24 in the videos. They continued by recommending that women only travel in groups.
Other films that appeared on TikTok in reaction to the troubling trend sent warnings to anyone who commits sexual assault on this day.
In an email to USA Today at the time, a TikTok representative stated, “Keeping our community safe is our priority, and we do not accept anything that encourages or glorifies non-consensual sexual conduct, including rape and sexual assault.
Although there are no videos relating to this topic on our site, our safety team is nonetheless on the lookout and will delete any content that does.
USA Today looked through more than 100 TikTok videos with the hashtag #april24, but no instance of the reportedly original, ominous video could be found.
Even though numerous producers claimed to have seen the movie, they did not link their posts to the alleged content, raising doubts about whether the original film actually exists.
According to USA Today, the claim that a gang of men on TikTok are planning to rape women on April 24 in observance of the unofficially declared “National Rape Day” is inaccurate because the inquiry was unable to locate the original video.
Despite a flood of social media comments, neither USA Today nor TikTok were able to find any evidence that the video actually made the alleged threat.
Numerous media outlets covered this trend, but none of them verified if the original video actually existed or whether it was only a fabrication.
Many members of the law enforcement community adopted the style and started making reaction films.
The police allegedly cautioned any potential attackers with arrests after the practice attracted a lot of attention.
In the week before USA Today published its fact-check story, there were over 1,000 Facebook posts and over 50 Instagram posts about “National Rape Day.”
