Sexual assault trending; TikTok influencing men negatively Your disapproval makes no difference to celebrities

formances instead of just respectfully sharing their opinons.

EDITORIAL easier for women to come out and feel safe and supported. The trend targets them to make them feel small, unimportant, and like they need to stay in the dark about what they’ve been through.

Disgusting is the only word for this. Absolutely and unbelievably disgusting.

TikTok's April 24 trend mocks National Sexual Awareness month. A group of six men have made this date a day to applaud those who are sexual assaulters.

Parade says “Notably, April is actually Sexual Assault Awareness month, which is dedicated to advocating, educating, preventing, and healing from sexual assault.” Though the day is not an official ‘holiday,’ it has still been recognized and celebrated, and it is unclear if the trend is a joke. Abuse and assault are not funny, and it’s not something to joke about. It’s the kind of thing that shouldn't happen to anyone, ever. And it’s incredibly sad that nothing has been done to stop it from happening. Every day, girls and women all over the world are assaulted.

USA Today says “The predominant narrative is that a group of six men recently created a TikTok video in which they encouraged others to commit sexual assaults on April 24.”

The trend is yet another reason for girls to be scared to go out, now many are staying in on April 24.

It’s even more sad that these women are scared to say anything and feel like they need to hide and not share their stories because of what people will say and think. This trend is not making it any

Throughout the decades, society has listened to stories, but it has not made girls feel any safer when they’re walking down the street after a night out. It doesn’t make them feel any safer when they walk into a room full of men they don’t know, and when they start cat-calling them with the goal of making them uncomfortable just to boost their ego and get a laugh out of their friends.

And now they have to watch what they wear because - Oh, yeah, right; they’re asking for it?

No one asks for it, and no one deserves it. It doesn’t change the fact that they are too scared to leave their drinks out and open in a public setting.

It’s not enough that if a sexual assaulter is caught, then what happens? They get 20 years of jail and put on a sexual offender list? It’s not enough, and it never has been.

People have no idea how it feels unless they experience it and live through it.

So, to see these egoistic socalled “men” go around and once again take away from women is gut-wrenching. They once again feel the need to be in control and have the power.

We have to take back this date, this month, and our lives. For us and all the young women after us.

ALEXIS GOTT Reporter

So, I don’t know about you, but I watched the Grammys last month and ended up falling asleep halfway through. But when I woke up, I opened TikTok to find fans absolutely livid that Harry Styles got booed and shamed when he won an award for Album of the Year.

Styles approached the Grammy’s stage to give his acceptance speech, but he was suddenly rudely interrupted by an audience member. The interupter was not another celebrity, but someone who was believed to be a reporter.

The reporter shouted, “Beyonce should have won,” from their seat, and clearly this person yelled loud enough because multiple videos from Style’s acceptance speech picked up on the line.

Now, my first initial thought to this situation circulated back to Taylor Swift, and how the same incident happened to her all the way back in 2009. However, it happened a bit differently compared to Styles.

Vaping isn’t as cool as you think; Teens show signs of addiction, health issues

However, is the ‘thrill’ of vaping worth losing your lungs for?

In 2017, a then 17-year-old Daniel Ament made national headlines for being the first person to receive a double-lung transplant due to the consequences of vaping, according to Time Magazine Before this, doctors had not seen the damage that vaping could cause.

LILY CORCORAN Copy Editor

Generally, I’m not one to judge. If you think something is cool, then I won’t say otherwise.

As long as it doesn’t do damage to yourself or others, it’s all good. However, in the case of vaping, it’s different.

Vaping can quite literally kill you, and nobody seems to care about that fatal consequence.

It’s not a new fact that vaping is harmful.

According to clevelandclinic.org, vape juice (the liquid used in vapes) can contain a multitude of chemicals, including carcinogens (chemicals that cause cancer), “acrolein, diacetyl and diethylene glycol.”

Which are chemicals that cause lung disease, “heavy metals” such as nickel and lead, and more.

Now, if you want to put metal in your lungs, then go for it; I can’t stop you.

According to Dr. Hassan Nemeh, a thoracic surgeon at Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, “[Ament’s lungs] were so scarred they didn’t even deflate.

It was definitely a different kind of damage than we usually see. This lung was literally solid as if it was made out of truck-tire rubber.”

If not for the hospital’s quick access to an organ donor, Ament would have died.

Not only is the act of vaping itself dangerous, but the way some people conduct the act is downright gross.

The other day, I watched a girl in the bathroom come out of a stall and hand a vape to another girl, who then went into the same stall to vape.

Really, you guys? Are you that desperate for a hit that you’ll share a vape for it?

Not even the anti-vaping ads you see on Instagram stoop to that level.

At the 2009 VMAS, Swift was interrupted by rap artist Kanye West during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video. Kanye barged onto stage, took the microphone from at the time 19-year-old Taylor, and spoke the infamous lines “Imma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time.”

The audience then began to boo Kanye, but unfortunately Swift thought at that moment that the crowd was booing her, as she explained in her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana.

And then I got to thinking. Why do people feel the need to bring down successful celebrities?

It’s literally the most unnecessary thing ever. Like, I really don’t understand it. What do you gain from comparing them? Do you feel proud of yourself for bringing down other people’s accomplishments?

You can have your own opinion all you want. Obviously, it’s fine that you may prefer one artist’s music over another’s, but you don’t have to be rude about it, especially directly to the artist’s face.

I’ve seen SO many hate accounts on TikTok that are specifically made for hating a public figure, comparing them, etc.

One time I saw someone compare Ariana Grande to Mariah Carey, and instead of making a TikTok that’s like “I like Mariah Carey’s music more than Ariana’s,” they instead bashed Grande for her singing and per-

Sometimes, usually a lot more frequently than you may think, this stuff finds these celebrities and it affects them.

Taylor Swift seemingly dissapeared for a year because of her very public dispute with Kanye and Kim Kardashian because opinions became too much for her. Ariana Grande stopped posting as frequently for the same reason, because the internent became exhausting.

All I’m saying is you can, of course, have your own opinions on anything. Specifically in this case, you can like a celebrity and dislike a celebrity, but remember that these people are human. They are real, and they can see the things we post.

I think a lot of people fail to realize that celebrities have feelings, too. It’s not fair for them to get discredited and hated for doing nothing wrong. It’s not Harry’s fault for getting Album of the Year, and it’s not Taylor’s fault for getting Best Female Video in 2009.

There is no valid reason to deliberately go out of your way and make content or leave a hate comment on anyone’s posts. Leave your opinions to be talked about when you and your friends want to catch up on some celebrity drama.

Moral of the story, just don’t make your hateful opinions public! You don’t have to like every famous person, but you also don’t have to hate them and bring them down online... or at award shows.