I likely don’t have to tell you that a lot of weird things can find themselves generating some buzz on TikTok.
And as with the platform in general, its strange side can be a bit of a mixed bag in that some of its bizarre trends can be harmful , some can be helpful , and others are simply left up to your own personal tastes .
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But while it’s not usually difficult for an inexplicably popular video to strike us as dumb, we can sometimes find ourselves admitting that there’s also something captivating about them.
And in the case of one brief but unforgettable clip, that’s likely because it’s showing us something many of us didn’t even know was possible.
Be advised that the video featured in this video contains explicit language
On April 23, a woman named Mila Monet uploaded a short video that depicted her bending over her phone at a bar.
And while this is hardly an unusual sight, it quickly took a turn for the weird when a line of spit was seen dripping from her mouth onto the screen.
And as the man filming her zoomed in, it soon became clear why she was doing this.
Throughout the video, she showed off her talent for retracting her line of saliva so it crept up back into her mouth without falling onto the screen.
More uncannily, the phone’s touch screen indicated that it registered each brush with this line as if she was touching the number pad with her finger.
So with a proud smile, Monet then showed that by releasing and retracting her spit this way, she can unlock her phone.
If you’re wondering how this is possible, an article from Popular Science explained that the reason touch screens work at all is that sensors strewn across a grid of very thin electrodes measure changes in voltage and overall charge at certain parts of the screen.
Since our bodies are mostly water, they’re conductive enough for those electrodes to recognize and respond to our touches.
As Monet demonstrated, this is just as true for the lines of saliva we release as it is for our fingers.
And while it’s certainly an eye-catching trick, it seems that commenters weren’t quite sure whether to be impressed or disgusted.
Because while some thought this was a cool party trick that made Monet a “keeper,” others declared that this clip told them it was time to log off and made them swear off touching other people’s phones again.
As one user put it, “That phone probably hasn’t been cleaned in years.”
