• Creators on TikTok are sharing a viral brain teaser about pouring water into a series of cups through various pipes.
• This post has a straightforward solution once you look closely at all of the details.
• Engagement bait is a way creators on social media use their fans to make money.

A popular post is showing up everywhere on TikTok LIVE streams this week, posing what appears to be a simple question: when you pour water into a very specific structure of glasses and pipes, which glass will get filled all the way up first?

As with most of these “bait” posts—meaning graphics, memes, puzzles, etc. designed to be incorrect or annoying on purpose in order to drive engagement—the truth is more complicated. First, let’s think through how it works when you pour water into this system of containers and pipelines, then we’ll dive into why this specific engagement bait has been so effective on social media.

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⚠️ Spoilers Ahead! If you want to try to solve this brain teaser yourself, take a moment to study the image above. We discuss the solution below.

Red Pipe, Green Pipe

At first glance, I didn’t realize the cups and pipes had different kinds of connectors. We can easily rule out all of the cups that are underneath blocked pipes. That means 4, 5, and 6 are out of the running right off the bat. Cup 7 doesn’t have a stopped pipe, but it has a hole in it. In any scenario where we could pour fast enough to overwhelm the leak, the cups above 7 would fill up faster.

So we’re left with just 1, 2, and 3. But 2 has the same logical loop as cup 7, where a pour big enough to fill it, despite its outflowing pipe, would still fill cup 1 first. Otherwise, any normal pour would flow out through the bottom, 7 would never fill, and 2 would never fill either.

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That leaves just 1 and 3. But 1 will always be spilling water through cups 2 and 7, which means it won’t ever be filled under normal circumstances. If you look at cup 3, it’s the only cup that has a fully closed surrounding; both pipes that lead outward are closed.

So what if these cups were simply arranged this way, with open pipes and no hole in cup 7? We’d need to nail down some details about the exact lengths and diameters of pipes in order to figure out which of the bottom four cups would fill first, but it would be one of those for sure. Of course, none of that matters—this brain teaser is meant to intentionally infuriate you with minute details.

What Is Bait?

In 2023, the term “the algorithm” has become vernacular for the shrouded formulae that corporations like Google and Twitter use to decide what content we see, even from the friends, family members, and celebrities we’ve already chosen to follow. But these algorithms are “black boxes,” an industry term for code or math where information goes in, information comes out, and we have no idea what happens to it in the middle.

One thing people generally agree on, though, is that the algorithm is driven by engagement. Corporations don’t care what you genuinely like or feel happy to see; they care about how many times you click on posts and pages where they can serve you different display ads or sponsored posts. When Twitter added visible stats for Views last December, for example, the company made it clear that the number was what mattered.

This is where the idea of bait comes in. You’re probably familiar with “clickbait,” a term that means headlines and titles are designed to make you click through. But that often involves a bait-and-switch tactic, wherein the content doesn’t deliver on the headline’s premise (like if we just . . . didn’t give you the solution to the brain teaser in this story!). One iconic version is the chum box, those creepy blocks of ads at the bottom of a story that say something like, “Doctors hate this 1 weird trick,” with an accompanying picture of something disgusting.

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Because social media is monetized based on page and post views—rather than clickthroughs—corporations like ByteDance, which owns TikTok, incentivize people to dredge up participation. When posts have more comments and shares, it’s easier to justify shoving them into the networks of unrelated people, and the amount of activity makes viewers curious to see what’s going on.

Then, there’s rage bait, which you might see as posts claiming to share “unpopular views,” or where people make divisive claims on purpose. You can fight back against this bait by asking yourself who you’re trying to argue with (typically a stranger who’s faking it for attention, or a political enemy you’re never going to persuade), and what they’re getting from you.

There’s also engagement bait, which may seem less sinister, but still has a goal of wringing money out of your energy. These are posts where someone says to comment with a specific word as a “vote” (for . . . nothing). In the case of the viral Which-Cup-Will-Fill-First brain teaser, content creators ask TikTok users to repeat their guess to the solution over and over in new comments that drive engagement.

The Takeaway

TikTok pays creators more directly than any other popular social media platform, which means its creators are even more encouraged to rage- or engagement-bait for views and subscriptions. Creators like Ryan Gawlik, reported on by Insider, are just making strangers angry in order to line their pockets. You’re not having any kind of dialogue with him; you might as well be yelling at your television.

People need to make a living, but to be clear, this group is making a living by intentionally alienating and annoying people. In 2023, is this something regular people can afford to include in their daily lives? I’d much prefer to talk about a popular brain-teaser post with a friend or colleague—not yell into the abyss on a stranger’s TikTok post.

Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHICH