Middle Schoolers Murdered TikTok, Police Murdered Common Sense

In rural Tennessee, 16 middle school cheerleaders got charged for a TikTok where they pretended to be dead—because nothing screams 'solution' like criminalizing giggles. Lt. Teddy Lawing declared the girls must be "held accountable through the court system" as if a bad TikTok equals launching a war. Meanwhile, a 16-year-old AI prank got him expelled and slapped with a felony — despite the school admitting it was "a dumb mistake." As Makenzie Perkins puts it, you can’t "suspend, expel or charge your way out of targeted mass violence." Couch your pitchforks, folks. This is giving big canonizing-shutdown-of-childhood energy.

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Source: Propublica | Published: 7/28/2025 | Author: by Aliyya Swaby