The Tok Tok trend #writeaprisoner is encouraging users to write to convicted prisoners and become pen pals.
Weird huh?
The WriteAPrisoner.com is mainly made up of US prisoners. However, it has a smaller international inmate locator, allowing the service to attract users from all around the world.
The trend has racked up 85 million views and is filled with lots of users reaching out to prisoners.
Users have shared examples of the letters, poems, ‘mix tape’ song lists and even art work they have received from inmates. Some of them will be meeting up once inmates have been released.
Emily Shires, from Leeds, started writing to her prison pen pal Julian during lockdown and compared the website to TV show ‘Take Me Out’.
Emily said in one of her videos: “Lockdown’s had me really bored so I found this website called WriteAPrisoner.com and you can literally just browse through a load of inmates in prison all over the USA. You can see all their pictures, what they were incarcerated for and all that stuff – so it’s a bit like Take Me Out.”
Another user shares her experience of writing to an inmate:
In other Tik Tok news:
A US inmate has started his own TikTok cooking show from his prison cell, using a makeshift grill, created by using his metal bed and a hot plate from a broken oven.
Jeron Combs is currently serving 70 years plus life in prison, after being convicted of first-degree murder when he was 18 years old.
The now 31-year-old, from Paramount, California, has been uploading cooking tutorials to his TikTok channel, @blockboyjmomey, and has so far accrued more than 1.3 million likes to his account.
He told the Daily Mail that he had to be creative to be able to cook from his cell: “I broke a hot pot down and took the plate out of it and sanded my bunk down to the metal to cook from it,” he said.
@DigitalVinGill 