Maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon, but I can’t feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to try this.
I have kids, and I’m confident that if I asked my 10 year old about this, even she’d know that it’s a terrible idea.
I’d hope so too, but I worry that even the smartest kids could fall for something that perfectly targets the specific thing they’re really insecure about.
Wow, this brought back a weird memory.
There was a very old internet ‘trend’ that had folks basically stretching and helicoptering their dicks on a regime with the idea that over time, it would make them bigger.
Basically dicksmashing.
I’d worry about things they don’t understand. If there was a “bleach and ammonia” challenge, I’d be concerned.
I don’t think many kids know what happens when you mix those, and some would die figuring it out.
It’s going to be much more difficult to find a kid that doesn’t know that a hammer to the face is a bad idea.
It’s not the 10 year Olds that are doing it, it’s the disaffected, terminally online 20-somethings who have grown up in a hyperficial world with very little opportunity to form real, natural relationships. Ask your daughter in ten years if she’d do something harmful for the chance of increasing her attractiveness.
You have no idea what constant peer pressure, gas lighting, and unobtainable beauty standards can do to a young person. I do hope your kid will be able to resist that, but chances are once she is a teenager the situation might be different.
You have no idea
Chances are he’s old enough to have been young and knows all about this. At least I do and I was not that dumb. And if you reply that it’s worse nowadays, let me teach you about what happened since the 60s…
If you’d elaborate on what you are alluding to in the last sentence, I’d be happy to read it because I have no clue what you are referring to. You mean this kind of stuff was worse in the 60s? Sorry, English isn’t my first language and your sentence makes no sense to me.
No idea? I was a socially awkward fat kid. I have an idea.
I can see getting weird piercings and regrettable tattoos, growing a mullet or wearing your pants around your knees to fit in. I understand hiding your true self to blend in, or even bullying others to climb the social ladder.
As kids, we did some dumb dangerous things, kids always will, but hitting yourself in the face with a hammer with the intention of breaking your own jaw? If you’re dumb enough to think that’s a good idea and try it, then maybe it’s a lesson you need to learn.
Those who are willing to hit themselves in the face with a hammer because of a TikTok trend, deserve to be hit in the face with a hammer.
People are influenced by the world and people around them. And for young people today, TikTok is a very powerful influence. It tells people what is important in life, and how to get it.
You and I believe that hitting yourself in the hammer is unlikely to bring anything good; and highly likely to bring pain and problems; but we only know that because of things we’ve already learned. Different people learn different things at different points in their lives. And so there are a lot of young people who, when they are told that hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is going to make your more attractive - they might believe it and decide it is worth it.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2071/
Not directed at you, OP, but rather the poster in the image. What insane Internet circles are they in that this is the content they’re seeing?
“Retrophrenology: It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone’s character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore - according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind - it should be possible to mould someone’s character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that’s the main thing.” ~ Terry Pratchett
It is inevitable.
GNU TPratchett
So, there is a tiny kernel of truth to the core concept here:
If you repeat a process of microfracturing a bone, letting it heal, doing it again… it can result in either reshaping or strengthening of the bone. It can also result in neither of those things happening.
In rare but real medical procedures you sometimes intentionally break a bone and the set it up to heal in a more proper configuration or orientation, or do this repeatedly to attempt to grow your leg length.
With many forms of martial arts it has been postulated that a lot of the seemingly super human acts of endurance of various kinds are partly possible because of years of microfractures which heal and make the bones stronger over time, along with the rest of the training regimen.
If I remember the evolution of this part of looks maxxing, originally it was people doing like 30 minutes of tapping various parts of their faces to attempt to do this to their facial bones, to extenuate them overtime.
Can’t say I’ve ever seen any actual evidence this is any kind of real medical procedure.
But uh yeah, a good number of people seem to miss the idea of this being light and repetitive… smashing yourself in the face with a hammer is not going to cause microfractures.
That’ll cause much worse fractures. And possibly lots of other serious problems.
Oh well. Choke to death on marshmallows playing chubby bunny, poison yourself with tide pods, create a brain bleed and kill yourself via a hammer to the face. I wonder what the next thing will be.
I remember seeing something about this on the Guiness World Record Show when I was a kid and then spending my time repeatedly punching the wall while in the shower.
I’ve never really gotten into a fight or done anything cool with them but now my hands go numb sometimes so there’s that.
When I did Karate… oh god my Sensei would thwap me for not knowing the name, but we practiced form with basically a wooden 2x4, vertically placed in a mount, with twine wrapped around the target area.
The point of the thing was repetitious form practice.
If you hit it too hard, it would recoil and then come back and hit you again.
Hit it too soft and there’s no noise at all.
A neat way of moderating how hard you’re supposed to be striking.
Anyway, sorry your hands go numb sometimes =(
Micro fractures caused in martial arts will lead you to vomit and need to take 2 weeks to recover. Speaking from experience. X-rays and all. Do not recommend.
If you’re talking about toughening such as like they do in the practice of shin conditioning, that’s just killing nerves. It has Nothing to do with ‘reshaping bones’.
To follow the thread of tangentially related concepts:
The Ilizarov apparatus (caution NSFL). The leg is intentionally broken, then a terrifying cage encourages it to heal in a different size or shape.
I’m not sure how much it’s used now, but I was presented with it as patient as a potential option about 20 years ago. It was kind of a “please don’t pick this one it’s clearly worse” choice. Thankfully they’d done about a decade of prep work to enable me to pick the less extreme option.
The singer / guitarist from Weezer had his legs broken and extended to become taller. Rivers Cuomo was his name. It still is too.
I’d be very surprised if it was to become taller. I’d have to watch the clip again, but I only recall seeing the device stretching his pants on one leg.
I know they’ll do it to fix leg length discrepancies above a certain threshold, especially if the other procedure isn’t viable. I don’t know if there’s other medical reasons to consider it.