Normally TikTok give when you’ve had their heart broken?
Never inquire me as to why. But once i seated back at my room flooring, ears ringing to the echoes of my personal today-ex-boyfriend’s shaky voice advising me the guy planned to break anything of, We paid off my personal phone and you can, immediately following timely purging it of all the proof of my personal defunct relationships, established TikTok.
Immediately the For You Page, blissfully unaware of what had just happened, served me with a video clip off a couple of lovable gays filming an adorable skit for the adorable lovers web page. Clearly, despite the observed omniscience, TikTok’s algorithm had not been listening in on my calls, nor had it been reading my texts.
When I next braved the app three weeks later, nothing had changed. There they were, taunting me again: boyfriend memes, couples’ skits, soppy compilations of Ian and you can Mickey from Shameless. The FYP had been there for me in the darkest depths of the pandemic, but now it had forsaken me; left adrift and single in the depressing sea of #relationship TikTok. Well, I thought, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions? Up until a few weeks prior I’d been in a (seemingly) happy relationship, so videos that spoke to that experience were exactly the sort of stuff I’d eagerly engaged with. TikTok was only doing its job, but for obvious reasons I desperately wanted out of this nightmarish pit of romantic content.
We began to inquire how much time it can take the formula to help you suss away just what had occurred on the other side away from the latest screen (tl;dr date: moved, heart: broken) and you will punt myself back again to #SingleTok where I belonged. Therefore i created a simple try: Every day I would go on TikTok and you can browse the fresh new FYP for around half-hour, disregarding matchmaking-themed articles and you may double-tapping almost anything to would with breakups https://datingranking.net/fr/rencontres-de-voyage/ or being unmarried. In the process I would try out various other methods to push the newest app regarding the right guidelines. With some luck, I’d manage to go back my offer to help you a time where I wouldn’t have to hurl my personal mobile phone over the area. I could handle losing the sweetheart, but We was not planning to help TikTok go without a battle.
Date One
My first proper reunion with the For You Page was rough. During the 30 minutes I spent scrolling, I came across a nauseating 19 videos about relationships – including at least three couples’ accounts. Only one (a melancholy Brokeback Hill clip) seemed to capture anything resembling my current mood. As I waded through the thick sludge of content I noted down details of offending videos for later reference – we’re talking five skits with captions containing the phrase “whether your date,” three couples bragging about their gender lives, and not one but two Mickey and Ian slideshows. As a result of my thorough note-taking I was perhaps guilty of letting those TikToks play all the way through, and the app possibly misread the watch time as a massive thumbs-up, curating even more scenes of romantic idyll I didn’t want. Needless to say I came away from the experience feeling emotionally drained, but unsurprised. This was not going to happen overnight.
Time One or two
For my second dive into the murky waters of the FYP, I needed a change of tack, so I resolved to mark a note on a piece of paper whenever any #relationship videos flashed up, and to swipe past them without hesitation. Once again I spent half an hour scrolling and once again I was made to feel worse for it. I’m unsure how many clips I got through in total, but 42 of them literally had the word ‘boyfriend’ in the goddamn caption. I fell back on the sofa, groaning. Try as I might to steer the algorithm towards memes regarding the being contributed to your and away from skits on the spooning, TikTok wasn’t hearing me.
