‘I don’t know who needs to hear this, but . . .” So begin a thousand different videos on #breakuptiktok, watched by more than 850 million people and counting. There you’ll find anger, grief and glow-ups, set to a soundtrack of haunting piano instrumentals or Olivia Rodrigo teen angst anthems. There are nuggets of advice pinched from self-help manuals, and voiceover paragraphs from young adult romance novels. “There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you. But there was and I was in it,” reads a paragraph from Colleen Hoover’s Reminders of Him, used in thousands of meet-cute “befores” and rain-streaking-down-car-window “afters”. But for every video of performative crying (lots of mascara
TREND
Move over Bridget Jones. Here are the new heartbreak influencers
For a new generation, the only way to get over your ex is to document every step of a break-up on the social media platform — and get millions of views on the way
Emily Oliveira began sharing videos at the end of a five-year relationship
The Sunday Times
