Refinery 29
Crying for Sam Smith: why ending TikTok is the only honest part of the Internet
I was in bed drinking ginger tea and watching my 64 billion TikTok videos when I started to notice a trend. There was a lot of mascara running. And several clips were put together for Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Carteira de driver”. Before my eyes, strangers dissected their failed relationships – sometimes, just hours after they broke up. They said to themselves, “Girl, it’s time to let go.” I stumbled across #BreakupTikTok and was fascinated. If you search the hashtag #Breakup or #BreakupTikTok, you’ll find a variety of interesting and heart-breaking content. Some go to the platform to share how they overcame their suffering. Others create photo montages of the ex, with tips for the next boyfriend. (The tips range from “he will love you unconditionally, so please do the same” until “ask for a Dr. Pepper, without ice”.) A surprising number of people just film themselves crying on camera, wiping away tears while a classic A breakaway song, like Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” plays in the background. In the most devastating Tokens, you will see that someone really broke with the camera. As I watched, a part of me was impressed by the candor of these people. Some of them reminded me a little of myself when I was going through my worst breakup. But the other part of me was skeptical – and a little concerned. Were they just trying to get attention? Wouldn’t the creators regret being so sincere about their disgust? The Breakup TikTokers I spoke with were remarkably open about the reasons behind their content – and the advantages and disadvantages of going viral for showing their broken hearts to the world. Amber Anderson, for example, made a video seven days after breaking up with her fiance, with whom she saw two and a half years ago. It was a very impulsive decision, she says: One morning, she was preparing for the day and putting on makeup, when she looked in the mirror and burst into tears. Then, she started filming. “Just because someone came out of nowhere and you fell in love, it doesn’t make you soulmates,” says the 20-year-old girl in the video, pausing for a moment to fend off tears. “It just means that you met at a time when your souls most needed each other.” @amberlucyy_ Day 7: soul mates # broken heart #breakuptiktok #cure #breakupdiary #adviceforgirls ♬ Repeat until death – New Love Anderson is from the UK and, between her accent and wavy red hair, has a real Kate Winslet vibe. She didn’t think many people would see the video, she told me about Zoom. It was 14 days after she posted the video and just 21 days after her breakup, but she looks a lot happier now than on TikTok. “I did it to help myself, hoping to be able to look back in a month and see how far I’ve come – how much I’ve grown,” she says. “I didn’t think it was going to explode. I had only a few thousand followers at the time, and now more than 300,000 people have seen me cry. ”More, in fact: to date, it has received over a million views and almost 350,000 likes. Tess Mueske also didn’t expect one of her most difficult moments to go viral. The 24-year-old separated from her partner in October. Her three roommates were also breaking up at the time. In a video, one of her roommates makes fun of the situation, in front of a screenshot of a group text with her heartbroken friends, and reads the messages: “So, what stage of mourning is everyone in? ” After TikTok took off – more than two million people watched it – Mueske started posting his own videos, asking for advice and processing his feelings. “I feel like I’m still thinking about her a lot,” she admitted in a video. Mueske was motivated to share, in part, by the desire to see more uncured content on TikTok. “I think we see a lot of prominent coils,” she told Refinery29. “People talk about breaking up sparkles or ‘Oh, I learned all these amazing things about me.’ But we also need to hear people saying, ‘This sucks and I wish it hadn’t happened.’ I don’t want to share just the perfect parts of my life on the internet, because I’m not like that as a person. ”But she also mentioned that she felt isolated: she had recently moved out and didn’t have many local friends. Those she had were difficult to see in real life due to the pandemic. At TikTok, she felt heard. “It is deeply human to want to share our experiences, whether in therapy, through the written word or in TikTok,” says Anthony T. Pinter, a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder who led a study on social media and breakups. The desire to share is not all bad. “It is healthy to take emotions out of the body and document the healing process can be helpful,” adds Moraya Seeger DeGeare, LMFT, co-owner of BFF Therapy and an anti-racism business consultant. But it is healthier to share with people you trust – a therapist, a friend – than with your social media followers, she says. “Clicks and views are different from the real-life support of someone who knows you, who can comfort you and who can tell you difficult truths,” says DeGeare. There are consequences to sharing intimate moments online. “The internet doesn’t forget,” notes Pinter. And because it’s so easy to download videos from TikTok, and the platform encourages people to gather videos and borrow sounds, the technological life of their tears could theoretically last forever. Videos can hinder your healing process. “What happens if you become a meme and can no longer escape your own breakup?” Pinter asks. Anderson and Mueske are still in the early stages of their separation process, but both say the popularity of their respective videos causes a little anxiety – although it is difficult to understand. “At first, when I thought about how many people had seen it, my heart started to beat very fast,” says Anderson. “But I would still tell people that they are thinking of doing this to just get it out there. It helped me grow … When I look back and see how sorry I was feeling for myself, I feel like I’ve come this far. ”Privacy is also an issue – for creators and their exes, says Pinter. “People are not afraid to do what you might call ‘crowd justice’ when they see this kind of thing and feel that someone has been wronged,” says Pinter. “So it is definitely an important thing to consider whether you are thinking of sharing your story on TikTok or by other public means … The public can decide to resolve the problem on their own.” Hands of man and woman reaching towards each other. Studio photo Then there is the fact that your ex can see your video. For some, this is not a problem. “I hope he saw it,” says Anderson. “I would like him to know how upset I am and I want to continue posting about how I am improving. I’m fine. ”On the other hand, Mueske was shocked when his ex liked one of his videos after they broke up. “She was always adamant that she wouldn’t download the app, and when she did, it looked like she was reading my diary,” reflects Mueske. “It was the only place I felt I could speak openly about online separation.” After his ex joined TikTok, Mueske deleted some of his breakup videos. “I don’t want to paint it in a negative way, even though it hurt me,” she says. On some level, I understand where Mueske and Anderson are coming from. In 2015, I was 20, listening to Taylor Swift’s “Red” album a lot and was going through a doozy breakup. I felt the urge to write a horribly sincere diary about not being able to move on. I trusted someone and they broke my heart – so I let that baby bleed all over the page. “I didn’t feel a chill in my belly when he came into a room,” I wrote. “There was something more powerful, reckless, wild and beautiful down there. Was there a bald eagle in my stomach? “Embarrassing. But I was incredibly sad and couldn’t handle that emotion alone anymore. Instead of calling my best friends who, at that point, were tired of hearing me speak, I sent what was basically an unedited page of mine. diary for teen online magazine Thought Catalog. Not long after, they posted. At first I felt validated. Then I felt mortified. I expected my ex to read it and feared the idea. Eventually, I just didn’t care anymore. I read the story after talking to Anderson and Mueske, and I saw some of the same emotions in my story that they talked about feeling. At the time, I wanted to be seen and know that I wasn’t alone. thoughts in my brain, where they were circulating in a harmful way to health. Now, I can barely read a paragraph of the story without laughing at how devastatingly open I was (and sighing at the horrible writing). em is broken, but I don’t regret sending it – possibly because, as far as I know, no one I know has read it. And because it gave me a little peace at the time. Anderson and Mueske say that a positive consequence of posting their split on TikToks was the community they found as a result. Mueske followed advice that commentators left, like taking a new hobby to get his mind off the breakup. She started recording songs that she sings and writes at home in quarantine. “I threw myself into a piece of my identity that was not involved in it, and it was liberating,” says Mueske. Anderson says hundreds of people have contacted her on Instagram since she posted the video. Although she acknowledges that there may be a dark side to seeking support online, she has made friends with people who are experiencing something similar. She is even having a virtual celebration of Galentino’s Day with them. “You do some really stupid things when you are really sad, but it helped with my loneliness and kick-started many things for me. I’m not even crying anymore. And this is so strange, but in the end I feel proud of myself, ”says Anderson. “In the past, I hid and it didn’t help me to heal. But it worked, and now I have new people to reach who are also going through something big – whom I can reach without judgment or opinion. ”Anderson’s post-Tok experience is the best scenario. There are many ways to post about lost love that can turn sour, as Pinter pointed out. But if you decided to post and, like me, cringe about it later, make sure you know that you are not the first person to exaggerate matters of the heart on social media. And you certainly won’t be the last. Like what you’re seeing? How about a little more R29 goodness, right here? My breakup made me rethink my sexuality How to overcome a breakdown What to do after a break up