TIKTOK SHAPES
There are acceptable ways of showing hearts on social media now – and ways that are not. It’s often determined by your age.
“If you want to know around how old someone is, but you don’t want to ask them directly, ask them to make a heart with their hands,” said Julia Carolan, 25, a social media influencer from New York, in a TikTok video last year.
Over the video’s next 21 seconds, Carolan demonstrated that if someone formed a heart with all the fingers on both hands, it meant that person was “a millennial … an adult.” Only Gen Z, she said, makes hearts using just the middle and index fingers, as if it were a secret code.
The video, which has been liked more than 40,000 times, is one of hundreds on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other social media sites that discuss the right way to make a heart with your fingers.
“What’s funny is that I can barely do the Gen Z heart with my hands. Maybe it’s because I’m almost a millennial myself,” Carolan said in an interview. “The thing now, with TikTok and these videos, is that you’re really putting yourself, your face and body out there. Whatever you are doing, especially if it is showing love, has to feel authentic.”
Every year brings a new, trendy way for teenagers to create heart shapes online, said Sullivan, the TikTok creator.
“Part of it is the exclusivity, especially in the beginning, of just a small group of people knowing what the new symbol or hand movement is,” he said. “The moment it becomes too big, it becomes cringe.”
But what is old can also become new again. There’s been a resurgence recently of “vintage hearts” in videos, like the emoticon <3, Sullivan said.
“Like everything vintage, it’s coming back,” he said.
By Sheera Frenkel © 2022 The New York Times
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
