A Texas woman was cited by police for disorderly conduct after passing a note to waitstaff in a restaurant falsely claiming to be kidnapped as part of a planned TikTok video.
According to state police, 41-year-old Phelecia Nettles from Arlington, Texas passed a note to waitstaff at a Perkins restaurant in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in which she claimed to have been kidnapped and requested they call 911.
PSP Milton and Buffalo Valley Regional Police Department responded to the emergency call, but were told by Nettles that she passed the note in an attempt to receive a response. Nettles said she had intended to see how they reacted and post it on social media app TikTok.
A police press release noted that Nettles told officers that she meant the note as a joke and didn’t expect the waitstaff to take it seriously.
Nettles was cited with disorderly conduct at the District Court.
Newsweek has contacted Buffalo Valley Regional Police Department for comment.
This not the first time police have responded to TikTok-inspired behavior intended as a joke by users.
At the end of last year, the “Devious Licks” trend encouraged high school students to steal and sometimes damage school property.
TikTok banned the trend, removing the hashtag and any related videos, but it still spread to schools across the United States. What started as students stealing items including disposable masks and hand sanitizer snowballed into sinks being ripped out of bathrooms and the removal of fire alarms.
In Tennessee, multiple students were set to face criminal charges after allegedly vandalizing school bathrooms as part of the trend. Officials reported bathroom soap dispensers missing, ceiling tiles ripped down, paper towels clogging toilets, urinals broken and other vandalism. The students then allegedly posted videos about their actions to their TikTok accounts.
Similarly, in Pennsylvania, four people were arrested for causing over $10,000 of damage to school buses after they posted their activities on TikTok.
A spokesperson for TikTok told Newsweek in September 2021: “We expect our community to stay safe and create responsibly, and we do not allow content that promotes or enables criminal activities. We are removing this content and redirecting hashtags and search results to our Community Guidelines to discourage such behavior.”