I recently redownloaded TikTok after being on a cleanse for a few months. TikTok requires vigilance. Especially with new trends, you have to take some bad with the good: think “deviously licking” your middle school’s only working urinal. One of the first videos served amidst my scrolling spree delivered the curious “ihatemybf” trend.
Social media has — without a doubt — changed the way that Gen Z views relationships. Even if you don’t mention dating app culture, contemporary relationship dialogue is nearly impossible to translate without a PhD in being on your phone. AITA for misunderstanding the rizz vs. ick dialectic? What about love-bombing a situationship in the talking stage? Initially, this trend gave me a good laugh. Ihatemybf is, on the surface, absurd; just another bit of oxymoronic TikTok-speak I was out of touch with. However, upon closer inspection, my curiosity turned to confusion, which soon turned to alarm.
While our generation’s dating culture is only growing more confusing, progress is being made in furthering independence, particularly for women. Independence is vital to ensure we maintain our sanity. But the ihatemybf trend takes us a step too far. Videos tagged as ihatemybf often feature fictionalized accounts of how people treat their annoying boyfriends, with reactions ranging from mean texts to cheating to murder.
Independence is one thing, but the trend’s normalization of refusing to communicate after minor inconveniences is another. Self-respect is important, but the trend’s glorification of domestic violence, rebranding it as “feminism,” along with biphobia disguised as self-expression, is unacceptable.
Obviously, you don’t need to kiss the ground upon which your boyfriend walks just because he exists. But if standards are set straight, then you should also be willing to dump your boyfriend if he’s not fulfilling the qualities that you need in a partner, and continues to not meet them after genuine conversations. Hating your boyfriend for clout doesn’t make you a quirky girlboss. It just makes you immature.
Seemingly every ihatemybf post glorifies the “small and fragile” girlfriend who hits her “big and strong” boyfriend. The two contrasting stock characters depicted in this scenario are used to imply that it would “obviously” never play out in real life. This reinforces an unfortunate belief — one that many chronically online TikTok users tend to have — that domestic violence against men doesn’t exist.
In reality, around one in three men experience some sort of abuse by an intimate partner in their lifetime. People posting to this hashtag jokingly threaten to beat their boyfriend because they talked a little too loudly that day, and it’s videos like these that contribute to the shameful silence and stigma that often surrounds men who are victims of domestic abuse.
Another problematic trope is the bisexual girl who hates her boyfriend. For bisexual women, this trend doesn’t just become a space to vent frustrations about relationships with men; it becomes a competitive space where they have to hate their boyfriends in order to affirm their queer identity. Bisexual women are often accused of being imposters in the LGBTQ community or worse, especially if they date men — which they have every right to do.
This trend feeds into biphobic notions that queer women who prefer, or even date men at all, are less valid than queer women who prefer the same gender. Hating your boyfriends isn’t the only way to make you “actually” bisexual. Bisexual women who have a preference for men are just as bisexual as those who prefer women, but it seems like the ihatemybf trend has created an environment where bisexuality is only legitimate for women who have a stronger preference for women.
Maybe the entire ihatemybf trend is just a joke that I’m taking too seriously, but creating an acceptable way to make lighthearted jokes about topics as serious as biphobia and even domestic violence is unsettling to me. Social media trends aren’t meant to dictate our relationships in real life. Of course, the rampant exchange of ideas relating to relationships has had an impact on our generation as a whole, but I promise you that you’ll find more fulfillment crafting an organic connection with someone instead of following @relationshipguidehowto on TikTok, who is most likely a middle schooler on the internet for the first time.
Sure, boyfriends tend to play Clash Royale a little bit too much, and can have selective hearing at times. But at the end of the day, an intimate partner is someone whom you should have mutual respect, care and kindness for, not someone to joke about in ways that undermine trauma, not just potentially for them, but for millions of other survivors of abuse. If you came to me with a long list of reasons why you hate your boyfriend, I would tell you to just break up with him. Having the respect to walk away from a relationship that might not be the most sustainable is not only the best for yourself, but also for your boyfriend who breathes too loudly in your direction.
Ansley Kang SC ’29 has sworn to herself that she will be more productive and do her work instead of doomscrolling on TikTok for hours. She still doesn’t have the strength to delete Instagram, because spending an hour to figure out what music to put over a story is one of the true joys of life.
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