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.
Go out 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: break up TikTok is actually among the app’s most 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 filming by themselves crying, mulling over their lost lovers, or doling out sobering guidance.
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.
Therefore is actually delving toward #breakup TikTok a wholesome coping mechanism, upcoming? “I think as the human beings we find tranquility or insights to learn we are not the sole of them, to understand we are really not alone – there are many more individuals going right on through such things,” Gillian explained. “There was sort of companionship you will find through this. Often when you’re sad 
you should be as much as those who understand the pain otherwise who are going through it. It’s a part of the latest healing process where you disappear completely and you will eat your own wounds – and you will a means you might reflect on the connection would be to keep in touch with most other people regarding the serious pain and your feel.”
Go out Four
My foray into the miserable world of breakup content seemed to have worked. Perhaps spurred on by the new re also-launch of Taylor Swift’s disastrous break up record album Yellow, 12 videos about the now painfully relatable “All Too Well” jumped up at me. In some of them, women joked in the breaking up employing 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 initial individual understand this problem. Lydia Venn, twenty four, an other TikTok user whom went through a breakup the 2009 seasons, mutual my personal serious pain. “About what I recall it definitely decided the brand new formula is geared to films I would watched whilst in a love,” she recalled. “I experienced to switch my personal algorithm so i wouldn’t be revealed them as it is without a doubt not really what we should see in the course of a break up.”