Can TikTok tell when you’ve had your heart broken?
Don’t ask me why. But whenever i seated on my rooms flooring, ears ringing to your echoes from my personal now-ex-boyfriend’s shaky sound advising me personally the guy wished to crack anything away from, I decreased my cellular phone and you will, immediately after promptly purging it of all the evidence of my personal defunct dating, launched TikTok.
Immediately the For You Page, blissfully unaware of what had just happened, served me with videos regarding one or two adorable gays filming an adorable skit for the adorable couples web page. Clearly, despite their seen 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: date memes, couples’ skits, soppy compilations of Ian and you may Mickey out of 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 started to ask yourself how long it might grab the algorithm so you’re able to suss aside exactly what got taken place on the other hand off brand new monitor (tl;dr boyfriend: gone, heart: broken) and you will punt me back to #SingleTok in which I belonged. Thus i install an easy experiment: Every single day I would personally embark on TikTok and you will scroll brand new FYP for around half-hour, ignoring relationship-themed posts and you may double-scraping almost anything to perform that have breakups or becoming single. In the process I would try additional ways to push the fresh app on the right recommendations. With a bit of luck, I might manage to return my personal supply to help you a time where I won’t want to hurl my cellular phone over the space. I will handle shedding brand new sweetheart, however, I wasn’t about to assist TikTok go without a battle.
Time You to definitely
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 somber 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 “when your boyfriend,” three couples bragging regarding their sex lives, and not one but two Mickey and Ian slideshows. As a result of my thorough note-taking I was perhaps guilty https://datingranking.net/tr/interracial-dating-central-inceleme 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.
Go out 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 on the becoming provided on and away from skits on spooning, TikTok wasn’t hearing me.
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