Exploring TikTok’s Guidance on Social Cues, Eye Contact and Friendship

There’s no escaping the fact that the world is markedly different ‘post’-pandemic. We’re out of the first panic of a global unknown, but life is changed forevermore, for better or for worse. 

While there isn’t really an area of life that the pandemic and lockdown didn’t touch, they seem to have had a particular effect on our interpersonal relationships. Whether we’ve let people drift or we’re desperately searching for new intimacies, forced time alone has cast the way we relate to each other in a new light. 

I remember some of the first tentative outings I had post-2021 lockdown; it was a trip to the newly reopened pub and my friend told me that people I’d never met before would be there. I realised with a shock that it would be the first time I had come across anyone new in a year. I stressed over things that I hadn’t had to think about in a long time: was my makeup ok, too much or too little? Would this jacket signify “cool and approachable”, or was it silly? It was all fine, of course, and I can laugh about it now, but in the throes of that evening I spent much of it worrying whether I had struck the right tone. Did they think I was too much?

I think that was probably a natural response. But the TikToks that keep popping up on my FYP over the past couple of weeks would suggest otherwise. In them, women and femmes take a life coach position, offering advice on how to behave in social interactions. The advice isn’t broad social etiquette things like “bring a dip”, or “buy the second-to-least expensive bottle of wine at the supermarket so you don’t look like a cheapskate”, but more picking out the minutiae of eye contact or subtle social mores that make people feel appreciated or draw people in.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

@thedailyvictorian appears often on my feed, stretching herself into unthinkable yoga positions in her sun-drenched studio apartment with a mic strapped to her chest as she offers advice on how to make yourself instantly cooler in any group situation. She gives a phenomenon a name and then an example of when you have the opportunity to be that kind of person, like the ‘what do you mean by that’ person, who will always ask for clarification on terms or phrases that they don’t recognise, both for their own benefit and that of the group. She’s gentle in her delivery and comes off like a big sister, caring and guiding without being especially patronising.

Another video that’s stuck in my mind in this vein is from Danielle Bayard Jackson, aka @thefriendshipexpert, that breaks down how to implement eye contact with someone that you’re not directly speaking to in a group conversation. She gives an example, then explains how you can do it and why it works as an inclusive tactic. On the one hand, these kinds of videos feel comforting. It’s nice to think that these things are no longer going unsaid, that we’re actively thinking of including other people and how to be better at bringing people in. On the other hand, there’s something weirdly coddling and handholding about it. Have we really become so distanced and lacking in trust of our own social capabilities that we need a stranger on TikTok to tell us how to strengthen them?

Social interactions have always been built upon unspoken conventions that have felt comforting, because they provide a scale against which to measure transgressions of those conventions. But maybe it is time that these unspoken things get drawn out into the open. Perhaps it’s a way to preserve the fragile community and care for others that was sparked again by the pandemic; it’s also true that these videos could be a useful resource for neurodiverse people, with the codes and conventions of looks and ‘vibes’ explained with step-by-step instructions of how to recreate them for yourself.

 “I don’t want to live in a world where we’re all policing ourselves for fear of putting someone off or tiptoeing around someone else’s feelings.”

But these videos aren’t only finding an audience with the neurodiverse community on TikTok; they also differ markedly from the other videos that I’ve seen under the hashtag #socialanxiety, or those specifically geared towards neurodiverse people. They’re less about mitigating how we feel about ourselves in social situations and more about other people’s ease and comfort. It’s also largely women and femmes creating and interacting with these videos, so there is an argument which says they feel like another instance of women and femmes distilling themselves for the comfort of other people. Why are we so concerned if people don’t like us, or we don’t make eye contact with the group listening into our conversation because we’re too wrapped up in it? 

Of course it’s great to preserve human connection in these small ways, but I also reserve the right to be exclusive and annoying in public: I am not for public consumption; I am not good for everyone. In the context of overly didactic TikTok videos, a constant stream of people offering tips and hacks and advice and products to buy, these videos can easily be taken as gospel. I don’t want to live in a world where we’re all policing ourselves for fear of putting someone off or tiptoeing around someone else’s feelings. Particularly after a period of stringent lockdowns, surely what we need is unbridled life and living.  

Writer: Jemima Skala