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.
Time 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 simply among app’s extremely 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 themselves whining, mulling more its destroyed lovers, or doling aside 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 is delving toward #breakup TikTok proper coping process, next? “In my opinion given that individuals we find tranquility or insights knowing we’re not really the only of those, to understand we are really not alone – there are many anyone going through such things,” Gillian informed me. “There is certainly sort of companionship discover from this. Often while you are sad just be up to people who comprehend the discomfort or who’re going right on through it. It’s a part of the latest healing up process for which you go-away and eat the injuries – and you may a method you could potentially think about the partnership is to talk to most other human beings regarding the aches and your enjoy.”
Day Four
My foray into the miserable world of breakup content seemed to have worked. Perhaps spurred on by brand new lso are-release of Taylor Swift’s devastating break up album Red-colored, 12 videos about the now painfully relatable “All Too Well” jumped up at me. In some of them, women joked regarding breaking up with regards to men 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 initial person to have this disease. Lydia Venn, twenty-four, a fellow TikTok user which experience a separation this past season, shared my personal serious pain. “As to the I remember it will be decided the newest algorithm was targeted to video I would spotted during a romance,” she remembered. “I’d to change swingingheaven reddit my formula therefore i wouldn’t be revealed her or him as it is naturally not what we should find amid a breakup.”