Please Stop Getting Your Dating Advice from TikTok

touching grass, falling in love, and - shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.

song of the week: surrender by Suicide

You’ve been being primed for love as long as you can remember. From Disney films to watching your friend’s parents kiss, you look away ashamed. Then at sleepovers, you’d discuss love at length, what the love of your life would look like, how they would act. As a teenager, it would give you a funny feeling in your stomach as you waited for it to be your turn as all of your friend’s got their first kiss too. With thanks to those movies and the addition of social media – having love, losing love, and yearning for love – became the backbone of most people’s twenties, it certainly had mine.

TikTok pushes hard on these new bruising insecurities, feeling them out with its spindled fingers as it moves through the mush in your brain. The algorithm constantly metastasises into a new evil to keep you hooked; it goes for every part of your life until it finds a sweet vulnerable part it can push into, in this case, it clicks onto love.

Its brain pulsating into the following data set thoughts as it feels you out: okay, they stopped on this photo of a happy couple > send more couple content > okay, they’re looking at breakup content > avoidant, anxious or a third worse thing? > okay, now the pièce de résistance, let’s give them dating advice. Sandwiched between a hot couple who is more in love than you’ve ever seen and a woman posting about her boyfriend forgetting her birthday – is a video from a dating advice TikTokker.

Each post an amalgamation of do’s and don’ts like this: “Sainsbury’s flowers are no longer good enough, you should be getting £150 roses hand delivered every Friday. He should pay for every meal out, obviously. Shorts are a beige flag. Flip flops are a red flag. If he doesn’t soft launch you, he is hiding you. Don’t ever post a man until you’re married.” What we forget to notice is that usually the creator behind these posts is a florist selling £150 bouquets and a dating advice TikTokker trying to earn their second million. The dangerous combination of seven second clips and addictive ideals; you’ve been sucked in to the world of dating on TikTok and you can’t get out.

Once reserved to well-meaning aunts and out of touch married friends has now reached our phones and we’re accidentally consuming thousands of must-do’s and must-never’s for our future relationships based on someone else’s ideals. Wizard Liz only wants to date rich men. Sheraseven believes marrying for love is for fools. What you think doesn’t matter, our types and individual needs flattened out under oppressive black and white rules.

Of course, it rarely translates outside of our 6.3 inch display. You go on a first date and you like him, he’s funny and sweet and he holds your gaze as long as you like it, but he didn’t buy your beer and you only tell him pre-approved TikTok sentences your dating coach told you. You don’t really meet him and he doesn’t really meet you. You agree to see him again, then on the way back from the date you load up TikTok and watch in live time as painful relationships are broadcasted and you feel afraid that could happen. Then one blink, breath, and scroll afterwards you watch Jett buy Pookie a Lamborghini in pastel green to match her Birkin – Matt, 24, Hammersmith, didn't buy you a Guinness let alone your retirement. So, what’s the answer? You either don’t see him again and wait for your rolex-studded man they promise is on their way or you date him and feel you failed your TikTok dating coaches.

If you hadn’t noticed, what I am doing is staying away from talking about the type of ‘dating coaches’ on TikTok aimed at young men – how to pick up women by acting completely awful and for the most part actively negging. Without dissecting the entire manosphere, it’s safe to say, it’s fucked up. I’m saved from receiving this content on my feed as a woman but I’ve searched for a few videos, and I’m grateful to click off of them. The concept for both targeted videos is the same – feed into peoples insecurities > tell them to act like something else entirely > promise them love. Of course, it can’t be love, because though Sheraseven may call me a fool, I believe that love is born out of authenticity, honesty, and something indescribable in three short words.

It’s too much of a stretch to say all dating advice on TikTok is bad, in the same way it would be too much to say it’s good for us either. I think for the most part, dating coaches on TikTok offer great entertainment, they offer a fun small dosed ideals in the same way one might watch Love Island. But there is something sinister the way these clips too short for our brains to decipher imprint on our brains. The truth is some people will fall in love with Lamborghini owning, Birkin buying men that retire you at 25, others will not – but love is not found in one size fit all downloadable e-books. WizardLiz one of the most popular dating coaches of TikTok fell in love and preached to the masses on her success only to then be publicly let down. I do not judge her for this, and neither should you, love is not a predictable thing despite the online course she sold ‘linked in her bio’ would tell you.

In the real world, with TikTok tucked away in our pockets, I hope we sit across from one another as people instead of with pre-prepared ideas of how to make a man fall in love or see us as high value. I hope you sit across from someone and they make you laugh. I hope you get to experience love, and I hope you get to experience everything that comes before it and after it. Because in a world of automation and bubble wrapping, experiencing things for yourself is exactly what it means to be human.

The only advice that has worked for me is to develop my own taste, my own beliefs of what makes me happy and date with those in mind. Not my friends opinions, or my families, and certainly not, my algorithms.

-Shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.