Playing pretend

TikTok psychology and the epidemic of disingenuity

“Push and pull”, one of my best friends, who’s a reasonable person in mostly every way, tells me. She’s updating me on a guy she’s seeing, and the strategies she’s implementing to make sure it all goes well.

“Aren’t we over that?” I say. “What if you just don’t play games?”

“Life is a game! You’re in it whether you want to or not”, she replies, assuring me that this is wisdom she has collected through years of scientific experimentation. “I push and pull, give him mixed signals, and that makes him obsess. That’s the rule.”

“But don’t you think if someone is the right kind of person to have in your life, you won’t have to fake disinterest to keep them there?” I ask. I’m troubled, as always, by the level of strategic calculation that permeates our communications and connections. What’s the point?

Sound familiar? If you’re a Gen Z girl on social media, it probably does. The amount of conversations like this one I have had with close friends recently just keeps increasing. If there’s one big downside to being the TikTok generation (okay fine, there’s many big downsides), it’s this: the rise of (for lack of a better term) TikTok psychology and how it’s pushing our generation to become more disingenuous. I’m very interested in the intersection of Gen Z and the internet, and how our relationship to digital tools affects the way we navigate the world. Subtle cultural shifts are what I’m looking to explore - and this is one I have been noticing a lot lately.

Now, this is based on my experience navigating social media as a girl, with the type of for-you-page TikTok delivers to me and all my female friends. If you’re a guy reading this, you can comment to let me know whether you’re observing the same shift over on your side of the algorithm, because I wouldn’t know. But here’s what I am seeing.

Bite-sized pieces of psychology wisdom spread on TikTok like wildfire. Of course, everyone is an expert. And what’s better than being served with 30-second-long life-changing tips alongside your morning coffee? TikTok makes psychology simple, digestible, accessible. It makes it shareable and saveable. How lucky we are to be able to access the inner workings of the human psyche and understand the forces that make the world move, so easily. Right? “3 month rule”, “act nonchalant”, “never text first”, “push and pull” — our feed is full of theories promising to deconstruct and demystify the process of human connection, once and for all. All you have to do is follow a few simple rules. And with each rule, stem further and further away from being genuine and open. With each theory with 7 million views and 2 million saves, drive yourself further away from clear communication and real connection.

To put it simply, I feel like TikTok is brainwashing our generation to believe that the way to build real and valuable human connections, is by being calculated and disingenuous. TikTok psychology is teaching us that the way to be liked and loved is by playing on each other’s insecurities. Of course, many of these theories have been around forever - nothing new about encouraging girls to just ignore a guy they really like to make him feel extra insecure, and therefore incentivised to try harder and care more about the ‘reward’. It’s just that there has never been a time where such ‘quick-fix’ psychology content was spread in this amount and with such speed, reaching a mass of 16-25’s like never before. What does it mean for us?

Human connection is at the core of everything. Usually, it’s the underlying reason why we do a lot of the things we do - it’s a driving force and a beautiful experience, one of the parts of life that make it so great. And you know when human connections are at their most rewarding and fulfilling? TikTok isn’t ready for this one shocking discovery: when we’re genuine with each other. You can collect a good amount of superficial connections and experiences by being purposely distant, disinterested, and disingenuous - sure. But why? I think we forget the end-goal of connection: we need it to be fulfilling, we want it to be real. But that can’t happen if we refuse to be real ourselves. Think back at your favorite experiences with other people, the deepest and most beautiful connections you were lucky enough to share. They’re always the ones where you let your guard down and opened yourself up to actually connecting with someone, the ones where you expressed mutual appreciation and gratitude without fearing how it would come across (or fearing it, and doing it anyway).

The people that make the biggest impression on me are always the ones that are open and real about that - the ones that unexpectedly say something acknowledging they are grateful for our connection, without minding that they’re being vulnerable. It always leaves a mark on me and I see them in such a positive light; it shows security and confidence in oneself. To that, TikTok psychology says absolutely not. What are you doing being vulnerable and open? That’s how people lose interest. And the only thing I’ve learned about that is that if someone loses interest in a connection, friendship, relationship, because you’re being genuine instead of playing games, maybe it’s one that doesn’t belong in your life — it’s not personal, it’s just not a good fit. Another little psychology fact we’ve learned from years of being human is that people like people who like them. A friend who’s always really genuinely happy to see you, who never leaves you second-guessing your place in their life, who makes their intentions and feelings clear; when that puts us off, it’s not because of them, but because we weren’t that interested in keeping that person in our life anyway. And vice versa.

I’m not old enough to have many substantial life lessons to share yet - it all feels very much like a work in progress, I’m learning with every experience, they start to take form. But this one I feel fairly certain about, having collected what seems like sufficient evidence: beautiful things come to life when you decide to be genuine. Also, being open and communicating clearly will save you more time and energy than you think. Playing pretend and faking disinterest might get you what you think you want in the short term, but it will never be fulfilling. It’s insane how deeply we dig ourselves into a hole by creating fake problems like refusing to ever text someone first, when we could just do what we feel like and see what happens. Overanalysing everything you do is also just exhausting. My fear is that TikTok psychology is teaching our generation that that’s the way to human connection, through quick-fixes and theories that rely on using each other’s insecurities. It’s embedded so deeply in our subconscious that we often don’t even realize what drives us. I’ll take the optimistic view and say I hope we collectively start going the other way, being genuine for the sake of it, and embracing openness over the futile quest for absolute control.

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