Trauma Porn: Newest TikTok Trends Sees Teens Pretending to Be Victims of the Holocaust

While the concept of the trend is innocent enough: Creators desiring to share stories and knowledge about victims of the Holocaust. Misguided ignorance and a failure to see how this can be hurtful to others have led to outrage on social media.

The creators often show themselves dressed in costume and makeup to imitate those who had been killed, tortured or placed in concentration camps by the Nazi's during Hitler's Third Reich. In the videos, they explain how it was they (the characters they play) died during the Holocaust.

Others on social media are seeing this trend as blatant disrespect for history and to the memory of those who died or survived during World War II.

Director of survivor affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Museum stated in an interview with Insider Magazine:

Imitating Holocaust experiences dishonors the memory of the victims, is offensive to survivors, and trivializes the history.

Trauma Porn

Commenting on the tend, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, known only as Briana said:

Our obsession with trauma porn [when discussing tragic histories] has only motivated a desire to dramatize these narratives.

To most that are outraged by this behaviour, this is clearly not the way to be sharing the stories of the victims of the Holocaust. Despite wanting to help 'educate' people, most feel as though it demeans and dishonours the families of victims and survivors and it needs to stop.