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.
Date Three
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: separation TikTok is largely among the app’s really energetic 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 shooting on their own crying, mulling more their shed people, or doling out sobering suggestions.
Was this self care or self-destructive? I wondered. To answer that, I reached rencontres chaudes pour la fessГ©e 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 is delving to the #breakup TikTok a healthy coping system, next? „In my opinion since the people we find solace otherwise facts understand we are really not the only ones, to know we are really not by yourself – there are other some one dealing with may be,“ Gillian explained. „There is a sort of camaraderie you’ll find from this. Sometimes if you are sad just be up to those who comprehend the problems or who’re going right through they. It’s a part of the healing up process in which you disappear and eat your own wounds – and you may a means you could reflect on the partnership will be to communicate with other individuals concerning your problems plus experiences.“
Time Four
My foray into the miserable world of breakup content seemed to have worked. Perhaps spurred on by this new re-discharge of Taylor Swift’s disastrous break up record album Reddish, 12 videos about the now painfully relatable „All Too Well“ jumped up at me. In some of them, women joked throughout the separating the help of 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.
We was not the first individual get this disease. Lydia Venn, twenty four, a fellow TikTok affiliate exactly who had a break up earlier this year, common my problems. „About what I recall it will be felt like the brand new formula are geared to video clips I’d noticed during a romance,“ she appreciated. „I’d to alter my personal algorithm therefore i wouldn’t be shown them as it’s definitely not what we want to select amid a break up.“