How TikTok Audio Torture Actually Works
I am writing this article while under the influence of what TikTokers calls “audio torture”. There are many versions of the anguished sound to choose from, and mine is this one , which has a YouTube warning in its title (“videos and audios may have psychological consequences”). Is this really going to drive me crazy? Let’s get a look.
The sounds that TikTokers have called torture are different versions of what is known as Shepard’s tone. Note that this discussion does not apply to audio recordings of torture , which probably also exist ; Shepard’s tone is a sound illusion, a track that seems to get higher and higher in pitch even as you play it in a loop.
Shepard’s tone and similar soundtracks are not new. Here is a document that traces this phenomenon as it has been used in musical compositions since the 1500s. They call it “tone cycling”. The basic idea is that several tones are played simultaneously, usually an octave apart. Each of these tones gets higher and higher – imagine every musician in an orchestra playing scales together, some an octave higher than others. Obviously the pitch cannot rise forever, as there is a limit to how high an instrument can play (or the human ear can hear). But since there are several tones ascending in parallel, our ear follows the ascent from one octave to the next, to the next, even if each individual instrument in the cycle only plays one octave and then returns to the beginning.
There is one more trick needed to make this work as an infinite loop. To prevent our brains from picking up the point, you gradually muffle the highest tone as it reaches its climax and boost the lowest as it enters. As the higher tones decay, your brain begins to pay more attention to the tones in the middle. Effect: A sustained note that seems to rise forever.
You can, of course, do the same with the falling tone. Here is a smoothed example called Shepard-Risset glissando:
So what’s the deal with TikTok? I attribute this to the creativity of today’s youth. In my day, we’d say, “Did you hear about Shepard’s tone? Check it out” and then play back a few seconds of the clip. “Yeah, that’s weird,” our friend would say, and then we would disconnect from the Internet because someone was probably waiting for a phone call.
Today’s TikTokers, by contrast, challenge themselves to listen to their chosen loop for hours on end, amid exaggerations that the soundtrack will “literally drive you crazy” or warnings that “you can’t listen to this without hitting a dead end.” crazy.” Sometimes they list symptoms like nausea or panic attacks as potential side effects of listening to the tone.
It’s true that it’s fucking weird to listen to. I still listen to the upbeat and it’s like that moment of heightened tension in the movie where you’re just waiting for the scary jump… except the scary jump never happens. Some research shows that people sometimes feel the sensation of falling if they listen long enough, but I have not been able to confirm that such a sound will “drive you crazy”.
TikTokers tend to suffer for their art, but usually only to the point of boredom and annoyance. Sometimes after a few hours they will take a nap. Kudos to this guy for waking up, restarted the sound from about the time he fell asleep and cranked the volume up to max for a dramatic finale. (He was fine.)
Incidentally, the examples we have of actual CIA torture using music include actual songs . The detainees were kept in the dark but kept awake thanks to tracks such as theme songs on the theme of Rawhide and Barney and Friends that were played at high volume. As for me, I look forward to being able to stop Shepard’s tone cycle as soon as I file this story, but I’m still not crazy. Except for the fact that at this point I would probably be happy to listen to Barney’s theme for a while instead.