so tiktok taught me something new

as per usual in my daily life, i was doomscrolling on tiktok today. i am very aware of the ramifications and absolute harm it has on me both mentally and physically, but i came across this short by a local singaporean content creator. he describes about his frustrations with the older generation, specifically with his parents about how they refuse to interact or learn about technology, despite actively using it every day. they would constantly ask him for help to navigate their phones or other home technology. 

he describes about his mother calling the cell service company for assistance with the persistent weak wi-fi connection at home. the man was very occupied, mind you, he was taking a number two in the bathroom, when his mother yelled to him desperately for help. though annoyed, he quickly came out to help, only to realise all his mother needed to do was turn the broadband system on and off. just a simple flip of the switch.

and this reminded me a lot of the older people i met in my life. for my cases, it is not about being ignorant or clueless, but it is the refusal to learn and understand once taught. then someone in the comments mentioned that this may be a case of 'learned helplessness', and that got me curious. and thus i spiralled into a rabbit of learned helplessness and weaponised incompetence. 

the latter i am more familiar as a lot of male friends and relatives have this horrible tendency to just ignore or not give a damn to be in any way considerate to anyone other than themselves, but learned helplessness was a brand new term for me.

by defintion, learned helplessness means 'a condition in which a person has a sense of powelessness, arising from traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed'. it is also a symptom of depression!

i watched a video where a professor conducted an experiment with a group of students where they have to form anagrams with a simple set of words. the twist is that one half of the group had simple words to decode, whereas the other half had words that were impossible to form new words, but both groups had the same puzzle in the third question. the first group were able to solve the third puzzle easily, while the other group simply could not and gave up. it was such a fascinating and quick display to teach the concept of 'learned helplessness'. 

honestly i have no idea why i was so enamoured by this symptom but it took about 30 minutes of my day, and i just thought i shared about this cool new thing i learnt from tiktok, of all things