TikTok Almost Made Me Hate Men

It starts innocuously. You like one video. Then two. Then three.

That’s all the algorithm needs.

I had liked a few videos of women in abusive situations finding their voice and speaking up. Powerful and important content. The kind that makes you feel seen and informed. Then, as if the app had been waiting for permission, my entire feed transformed overnight. Feminist content — which I genuinely loved. Discussions on gender dynamics, women’s rights, systemic inequality. I was engaged, I was learning, I was nodding along.

But then something shifted. The content crept further. Misandry entered the chat. And over the next three to five months, something quiet and alarming happened inside me: I could no longer look at men the same way.

The world my phone was building for me

According to my feed, men were not just flawed — they were dangerous. Predatory. A species to be survived rather than lived alongside. The comment sections reinforced it relentlessly. Cruel, cold, dehumanizing things said about women, by men, with apparent ease. It felt like evidence. It felt like data.

I became a little paranoid. Hypervigilant in a way I couldn’t fully explain or justify.

And then I put the phone down and went outside.

I took my toddler to the hospital one afternoon, and I couldn’t complete a transfer on time at the payment counter. A man nearby offered to help sort it out. Another man (a complete stranger) paid for a drink my baby had pointed at and wanted. The male doctor was patient, warm, thorough. The Uber driver on the way home chatted with me like an old friend, making sure we got home safe.

I sat with that on the ride back, because none of those men had gotten the memo.

The disconnect that almost broke me

This became my life for months. Phone open: men are the enemy. Phone closed: men are holding the door open for me, praising my parenting in the grocery store, checking on me when I look tired.

I remember sitting at a restaurant, quietly downcast about something I can’t even recall now. A male stranger noticed, walked over, and just — talked to me. Gently. Warmly. Chatted me right out of that dark mood and left like it was nothing.

The dissonance was disorienting. What I was feeling had a name, I’d later learn: cognitive dissonance — the psychological discomfort of holding two contradictory truths at the same time. The men my algorithm showed me, and the men actually in my life.

My brain didn’t know which world was real. So it kept flipping between them, and I was exhausted.

The moment everything snapped into focus

Then I looked at my husband.

Not for the first time, obviously. But I looked at him — really looked — and the absurdity of what I’d been absorbing hit me all at once. Here was the man who had come into my life and made me, without exaggeration, the happiest and most complete version of myself.

A man. My man.

The algorithm had been trying to make me afraid of the very kind of person who had loved me, cherished me, and stayed.

That was my breaking point. Or rather — my turning point.

What six months of clarity taught me

I stepped back from the content spiral. And in the quiet that followed, I worked through what I actually believed. Here’s where I landed:

1. Both things are true, and one doesn’t cancel out the other

There are genuinely cruel men in this world. There are also genuinely good men. These facts coexist without contradiction. What matters most is your actual lived environment. Many of us live in peaceful communities where no man is crouching in wait to harm us simply because we’re women. The men in our families, our neighbourhoods, our daily orbits — they largely wish us well.

That doesn’t mean we should be naive. If you live somewhere where systems, policies, and the men around you actively prey on women, your vigilance is not paranoia — it’s survival. Absorbing those stories matters. But absorbing them as your own reality when your reality doesn’t match is where the damage happens.

2. Men harm where systems permit it, and resist where systems support it

In countries with low rates of gender-based violence, it’s rarely because men are inherently better. It’s because systems punish harm swiftly and seriously, so it doesn’t become normalized. In places where abuse is rampant, it’s often because impunity is rampant. Systems that fail to enforce accountability create environments where cruelty flourishes.

And still — even in those broken systems — you’ll find men marching alongside women, sheltering women, fighting for women. Humanity persists. It’s just that a system rewarding cruelty will draw out cruelty in people who might otherwise have been decent.

3. It’s not a man problem, it’s a human problem

This one took me the longest to sit with, because it sounds like deflection until you really examine it. Patriarchy is not sustained by men alone. It is sustained by humans — men and women — who have been shaped by it and who, consciously or not, continue to pass it on.

The mother-in-law who endured abuse and now expects her daughter-in-law to endure the same. The wife who enables and defends her husband’s cruelty toward other women. The young man who knows better but performs hardness because vulnerability gets him called weak. These are human failures, not exclusively male ones.

What we actually need is a push for humanity. For equal dignity. For systems that reward care and punish harm, regardless of gender. Chaos and outrage are easier to generate online. But peace and policy are what actually move the needle.

4. Real change comes from building systems
Real change rarely comes from endlessly consuming or sharing hate-filled content online.
It comes from building and supporting systems that actually improve women’s lives.
Foundations and NGOs that sponsor girls’ education, provide shelter for women fleeing abusive marriages, fight against child marriage, and advocate for women’s rights are the kinds of efforts that truly move the needle.
And if creating such systems isn’t within your capacity, supporting those who already do the work matters just as much. Your small contribution ($2 here, $5 there) towards organizations doing real, on-the-ground work is meaningful support.

In doing so, you protect your peace of mind while actively contributing to something constructive. You help women in your community and across the world without losing sight of an important truth: there are still good men around us.

Not all men. But certainly some men. And very often, not the men we encounter in toxic online spaces.

We can speak against injustice without turning every man around us into the enemy. Calling out harm should not require denying the existence of those who choose to do better.

Before you close this tab

Guard your mind like it’s the most valuable thing you own — because it is.

TikTok is still my favorite app, but I’m much more cautious now because I understand how its algorithm works to keep me scrolling. Whenever I come across a video that could harm my mental health, I swipe away within seconds.

Learn from other people’s experiences. Empathize with pain that isn’t yours. But don’t forget to audit your own situation honestly. Are the men immediately around you actually dangerous? Or have you imported someone else’s war into a life that doesn’t require it?

If you’re surrounded by good men and you know it, don’t redirect your anger at them. They are not stand-ins for the men who hurt someone else. They can’t imagine hurting you, and they deserve to be seen clearly.

Find someone — a friend, a therapist, a trusted voice — who can flag when your thinking is drifting to the extreme. Someone who can help you channel real empathy into real action: building organizations, creating communities, pursuing policy, funding research. Because beyond the comment sections and the quote-tweet outrage, only structural change actually protects women.

And if you need a reset like I did? Sometimes you just need to put the phone down and go outside.

The men holding the door have been there all along.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.