Never query me why. However, as i seated back at my room floors, ringing ears on the echoes from my personal today-ex-boyfriend’s shaky sound telling myself the guy planned to split some thing away from, I paid off my phone and you can, just after on time purging it of the many proof of my personal defunct relationships, exposed TikTok.
Immediately the For You Page, blissfully unaware of what had just happened, served me with videos away from a couple adorable gays filming an adorable skit for the lovable people web page. Clearly, despite the thought of 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 may Mickey away 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 https://datingranking.net/cs/smore-recenze/ 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 wonder how long it would make the formula in order to suss away exactly what had happened on the other hand out of this new display (tl;dr sweetheart: went, heart: broken) and you can punt me back into #SingleTok where We belonged. And so i set up a straightforward test: Daily I would personally continue TikTok and you will scroll the brand new FYP for approximately half an hour, overlooking dating-styled posts and you can double-scraping anything to carry out having breakups or becoming unmarried. Along the way I’d check out some other methods to push the fresh new app regarding correct assistance. With a little fortune, I’d have the ability to get back my personal supply so you can a time in which We won’t should hurl my personal mobile along the area. I will handle losing new sweetheart, however, We was not planning to let TikTok go without a fight.
Time 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 somber Brokeback Slope 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 “in case the sweetheart,” three couples bragging regarding their intercourse existence, 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.
Big date 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 are added into and away from skits throughout the spooning, TikTok wasn’t hearing me.
