The internet has never met a teen trend it couldn’t warp into something darker, but TikTok’s latest stunt manages to feel both familiar and surprisingly bleak. It’s called the “flip the camera” challenge, and it’s got parents, creators, and every elder millennial who remembers chain emails about curses rethinking why we ever handed smartphones to the youth.
The setup is simple enough. A group of teens dances, hands a phone to some unsuspecting human, and lets them record the fun. Then one of the dancers suddenly swivels the camera toward the person holding it. That reaction gets posted. The “helpful stranger who did nothing wrong” becomes the punchline. According to news.com.au, the trend has escalated fast enough that experts are calling it a straight-up humiliation pipeline, not some PG prank with a cute soundtrack.
And no one has to look hard to see what’s happening. The targets tend to be the shy kid, the introvert, or the one who says yes too easily. The reaction clips rack up views while strangers laugh in the comments, a digital schoolyard where no one steps in.
The Internet Is Pushing Back Against TikTok’s ‘Degrading’ ‘Flip the Camera’ Trend
Creators are pushing back. Jools Lebron, who went viral for the “very demure” trend last year, posted a tearful response. “That flip the camera trend… all I just see is a bunch of faces of people who are just trying to help,” she said. Another creator, @keith_toks, called it the most “degrading trend” he’s seen on the platform. “This is kids getting away with bullying and then posting it on social media for everybody to see,” he added.
Parents are weighing in, too. One clip shared by @dreyysiller shows a mom giving her kids a full warning speech about even thinking of joining in. You can almost hear every parent of the ’90s whisper, “We had dial-up. How did it get worse than this?”
Experts are sounding the alarm. Janet Grima, CEO of Bully Zero Australia, told news.com.au that these videos rely on making someone look startled or uncomfortable. “That’s when it crosses from playful to cruel,” she said, describing the trend as “social humiliation dressed up as content.” She pointed out how behavior once labeled as bullying now gets rebranded as a “challenge,” which is bleak enough to feel like satire.
Grima says the only real fix is unglamorous: teach kids consent, and starve the trend of attention. No liking, no sharing. Report it instead. TikTok’s own rules ban harassment, and this fits the definition cleanly.
Teens will always chase reactions. The problem is that the rest of us keep giving them.
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