Our Obsession With Dating ‘Icks’ Is Holding Us Back

“New ick unlocked” read the text on a TikTok I’d just opened. The video showed the back of a man’s head, his earlobe flapping in the wind. I laughed as I typed “ick” into the search bar, curious to see more videos on what gives people “the ick,” and was met with a slew of other videos of small, seemingly harmless things that cringe out daters.

By now, the idea of the ick has become common parlance among Gen-Z and Millennial daters. A person gets the ick when they suddenly feel repulsed by the person they’re dating, often because of one (or even multiple) mannerisms that become overwhelmingly embarrassing to them. In fact, at the time of writing this piece, over 200k TikTok posts have included the hashtag “ick.”

Read More: The Psychology of Why We Get ‘the Ick’

I laughed at another video, this one displaying a man in an awkward squat, peering through a pair of binoculars. But my smile faded as I browsed through more TikToks. One woman’s ick was “When a guy leaves Starbucks with a Frapuccino in his hand.” She looked away from the camera in disgust. “Order a black Americano like a man,” she said. Another video presented the following as things that could potentially give someone the ick: Talking about your ex early on in a relationship, using 2-in-1 shampoo, and using no punctuation in a text message. And the most egregious example yet: One man’s icks included a “woman who doesn’t do PDA” and “a woman who dresses [in a way that is] too revealing.” “If you want to go around showing off your body, show it to your man,” he shrugged, as if this was a completely reasonable thing to say in this day and age.

Originally a harmless joke on the internet, the ick doesn't seem so funny anymore. Rather, it reinforces dated and sexist stereotypes. And instead of reflecting genuine red flags to look out for in relationships, the ick often speaks to an intolerance of others’ quirks or vulnerabilities. This is where all daters, whether you share these icks or not, lose: By focusing on the failings of our dates—failings that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things—we prevent ourselves from seeing our prospective partners as nuanced individuals. And we run the risk of writing people off too early.

A 2023 survey commissioned by the dating service Seeking makes it clear that the ick isn’t all one big laugh: 2,000 people were surveyed on their top dating turn-offs, and 49% said they’ve ended a relationship because their date did something to give them the ick. The top turn-offs in the survey suggest that the finicky attitude exhibited in TikToks appears to be bleeding into real life, too. If you go through the survey’s top 40 things that give people the ick, you’ll find complaints as trivial as double texting, having a bad tattoo, wearing dirty shoes or “bad jeans”, creased clothing, and using emojis in texts. This seems a great shame. What does it matter if the person who double texts and wears “bad jeans” is kind, respectful, and funny?

It’s also troubling that many people’s icks speak to patriarchal stereotypes. Men shouldn’t order Frapuccinos. Women should cover up. Even the most lighthearted TikToks reflected a disgust in men who appear awkward, gawky, or fragile. (For example, a man flailing about on an ice rink, or a man looking silly in a pair of swimming goggles.) And if we imply, humorously or not, that men appearing goofy and vulnerable is off-putting, are we not reinforcing toxic masculinity? Is asking men to be “more macho” not a step back?

Another reason the ick is a cause for concern is that it drives single people away from each other, in a time when young people need companionship more than ever. According to a February poll from the American Psychiatric Association, 30% of Americans aged 18-34 said they were lonely every day or several times a week. These days, young people spend more and more time conversing in digital spaces than we do in real life ones, getting our social fix from places like Tiktok, Snapchat, Whatsapp messages, and Instagram DMs. We fill the silence of our homes with podcasts and Youtube videos, fostering parasocial relationships with people we don’t really know. But we desperately need real life connections, too. And the quicker we are to dismiss other people, the more isolated we’ll feel.

As we become more and more disconnected from each other, perhaps we should be focusing on the things that unify us, rather than the ways in which people deviate from us and our personal standards. Maybe we shouldn't be so fixated on the ways in which people fail to meet our expectations, or the momentary ways they embarrass themselves.

The pursuit of perfection is everywhere we look. We face a great deal of pressure to put our “best selves” forward on our social media profiles. We post the best angles, covering up acne scars and cellulite. We display a highlight reel of our lives so that everyone thinks we’re continually on top of the world; Traveling to new places, surrounded by friends. What makes it to social media apps is a heavily curated version of our faces, our bodies, and our lives. We present ourselves in a similarly shiny light on dating apps, agonizing over the pictures we choose and our answers to prompts. And because we place such an enormous pressure on ourselves to come across as “perfect,” we’re increasingly expecting perfection from others as well.

Dating apps encourage us to believe that our perfect match is out there, too. We’re served such a limitless stream of alternatives, it’s tempting to believe that we can eventually find our plucked-from-a-dream, made-for-us match: Someone who never does or says anything embarrassing; someone who never irritates us or makes our eyes roll. Just keep swiping, the apps whisper, and you’ll find them.

Read More: If You’re Dating Right Now, You’re Brave

Realistically, though, that person doesn’t exist—everybody has their flaws. In any relationship, you eventually discover that you both have issues you need to work through. And there will inevitably be things in both of you that will be grating: One of you doesn’t take the trash out enough; one of you is forgetful; one of you snores; one of you crunches their food loudly (guilty). The problem arises when these icks are given too much weight, and when they discourage people from working through their mutual frustrations. Will people stop trying to make things work in the pursuit of someone who will never, ever rub them the wrong way? Will people decide not to go on a second date if something made them cringe on the first?

Alarmingly, it seems that people getting rejected over small turn-offs could be deterring them from dating at all. Hinge’s recent Gen Z report found that “over half (56%) of Gen Z Hinge daters say that worrying about rejection has stopped them from pursuing a potential relationship.” Having high standards when it comes to the important stuff, like your partner respecting you and treating you with kindness and patience, along with sharing your values and approach to life, is great. But if we create an atmosphere in which people are so paralyzed by the fear of rejection that they don’t put themselves out there at all, afraid that they’ll be written off for creased clothes or for their choice of beverage, we’ll wind up in an even lonelier world.

It can’t be good for anyone’s humanness to be written off so early; for a character flaw you’d barely blink at if the pair of you were in a long term relationship. In a long term relationship, you might think: "Yes, it’s off putting that my partner sometimes talks with their mouth full, but they’re also caring and funny and they show up for me. And, actually, I sometimes find the whole talking-with-their-mouth-full thing kind of cute."

People are not perfect, and sometimes that’s exactly what we love about them.