In order to see less of what you’re not interested in, TikTok recommends long-pressing on videos and simply hitting the “not interested” button to remould your FYP. I briefly considered this approach but worried that by smacking the algorithm whenever it misbehaved I might end up getting bounced to some weird random corner of the app, like sheep-shearing TikTok. I decided this tactic would be cheating, but still resolved to take a more proactive approach the next day.
Rather than trust the algorithm, I decided to take matters into my own hands and actively look for content more befitting the state of my love life, or lack thereof. As I ventured for the first time into the Explore section of the app, I clocked my suggested searches: “boyfriend gift ideas,” “cuddles with boyfriend,” “boyfriend appreciation.” For fuck’s sake. I had never searched for any of these things in my life yet TikTok was basically calling me a simp to my face. I ignored the slander and instead used the manual search option to find and furiously engage with every video I could under hashtags like #breakup, #heartbreak, and #dumped.
As it turned out, I was late to the party: break up TikTok is largely among the many app’s really productive subcultures (the #breakup hashtag alone has over 9 billion views). It was here I found weepy, snivvily solace among dozens of Gen Z-ers documenting their breakups day-by-day by filming by themselves weeping, mulling over its forgotten lovers, or doling away sobering suggestions.
Was this self care or self-destructive? I wondered. To answer that, I reached out to Gillian Myhill, a sex and relationship expert who once ran her own tech company. We agreed algorithms can be cruel things and she assured me it wasn’t unnatural to be annoyed by the couples polluting my FYP, rather, “you’re more in tune to it” when you’ve been through a breakup. “You have a different tint on your vision,” she said.
Thus was delving towards #separation TikTok an excellent dealing procedure, up coming? “I do believe since the human beings we find tranquility otherwise facts understand we’re not the sole of them, to know we’re not alone – there are many individuals going right on through similar things,” Gillian said. “You will find sort of camaraderie there are through this. Often whenever you are sad just be as much as individuals who comprehend the serious pain otherwise that are going through it. It’s part of brand new healing up process the place you disappear completely and you may eat your own wounds – and you can a method you could potentially think on the partnership should be to communicate with most other humans regarding your discomfort plus feel.”
My foray into the miserable world of breakup content seemed to have worked. Perhaps spurred on by the latest re also-launch of Taylor Swift’s devastating breakup album Red, 12 videos about the now painfully relatable “All Too Well” jumped up at me. In some of them, women joked on the breaking up through its boyfriends for the sole purpose of fully immersing themselves in the song’s much anticipated 10-minute version (I mean. be careful what you wish for). Maybe TikTok was just reflecting the cultural moment as it should, or maybe it was finally reading the room. To keep the momentum going, I doubled back through my liked videos and forwarded all the sad ones onto my friends for good measure. In Taylor’s words, this was exhausting.
I was Wicca-Dating-Seiten not the first individual understand this state. Lydia Venn, twenty four, an other TikTok affiliate which had a separation this past year, common my personal pain. “From what I remember it will be felt like the fresh new algorithm was targeted to films I would saw whilst in a relationship,” she appreciated. “I’d to evolve my formula therefore i would not be shown him or her because it’s however not really what we need to look for in the course of a break up.”
