2 Ways The ‘Ick’ Culture Is Killing Connection, By A Psychologist

Are “icks” saving you from heartbreak or stopping you from finding love? Here are two ways it may actually be shrinking the potential for real connection to grow.

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Today’s dating culture has dominantly become a landscape ruled by red flags and green flags.

It almost feels like a framework designed to protect you from heartbreak and a guide toward compatibility. Red flags warn of potential harm or incompatibility. Green flags often show up as small but meaningful behaviors, such as someone who listens actively, communicates clearly, respects boundaries or displays empathy and emotional availability.

On the surface, this system seems practical. It feels like it promises efficiency and clarity in navigating relationships. But if these criteria are too rigid, every interaction becomes a test. Every action becomes either a sign of potential risk or of promise.

For many, red flags are synonymous with getting “the ick,” a now-viral in phenomenon in popular culture.

Icks are sudden and visceral reactions to small behaviors or quirks, sometimes as trivial as the way someone laughs, gestures or expresses a preference.

The unique factor here is how instant and contagious they’ve become. Social media platforms and viral TikTok lists now encourage people to call out and share their icks. This simply turns fleeting discomfort into widespread cultural shorthand for dealbreakers.

In this way, icks have become more than personal impressions. They’ve morphed into a collective lens of judgment, and they could be shrinking the space for curiosity and authentic connection.

The Assumption Epidemic

Even when your intentions are clear, it’s common to let assumptions dictate your dating choices, which can create a gap between perception and reality.

Tinder’s 2024 Green Flags Study found that both men and women often hold the assumption that they want different things in relationships.

8,000 heterosexual singles across the U.S., U.K., Australia and Canada were studied. The survey found that young daters often misinterpret green flags as red flags, misjudging intentions in stereotypical ways.

65% of women assumed men were seeking casual flings, while in reality only 29% of men reported that. Both men and women said they want meaningful relationships and equal partnerships (78% of men and 84% of women). However, miscommunication and assumptions kept them from seeing that alignment. The survey results showed that their goals and desires overlapped far more than they realized.

This “assumption gap” points out something important.

You may miss the chance to develop something real simply because you build narratives around the initial assumptions you’ve made about the other person, rather than paying attention to what’s they’re actually saying in real life.

This has created somewhat of an “assumption epidemic,” as the survey highlights. Instead of seeing people as complex, we reduce them to checklists of behaviors, looking for evidence to confirm our assumptions.

While it’s practical and often helpful to know exactly what you can’t stand or absolutely don’t want in a partner, this approach can sometimes backfire.

Here are two ways the ick culture is killing more connections than it helps create.

1. It Turns People Into Checklists

The modern dating trend of scanning for icks can be quite harmful. It reduces potential partners to a series of flaws. Small quirks or harmless behaviors are amplified, and it becomes all too easy to “disqualify” someone before you’ve explored your connection with them.

This constant evaluation trains you to prioritize surface-level impressions over deeper understanding, and eventually removes the element of discovery and curiosity from dating.

Additionally, these icks can even reflect your own fears of intimacy or vulnerability. You may reject someone not for who they are, but for what triggers your discomfort. Then, patience and empathy take a backseat and the very behaviors that could have created trust and connection are overlooked or misinterpreted.

Research published in Psychology, Health & Medicine investigated how people gather information when evaluating potential romantic partners. Researchers focused on two strategies: confirmatory searching and balanced searching.

Confirmatory searching occurs when individuals seek information that reinforces their initial impressions. On the other hand, balanced searching involves looking for both positive and negative traits for a more complete evaluation.

The results showed that there were only a few who went with a balanced search. Participants overwhelmingly sought information that confirmed their initial judgments rather than trying to balance risks and positives.

This “confirmatory bias” means that most of us are more likely to look for evidence that supports our first impression rather than a nuanced or balanced view of potential partners.

This tendency highlights an important truth; we are often our own biggest barriers to connection. When you seek only what validates your initial impressions and entirely avoid what triggers your discomfort, you risk missing the depth and complexity of another person.

The checklist mentality oversimplifies people, instead of seeing them as evolving beings. Recognizing this bias is the first step toward slowing down and seeing people for who they are beyond first impressions.

2. It Creates A Fear Of Authenticity

When everyone around them might be “getting the ick” for the smallest of things, people start curating themselves in order to avoid rejection. This creates a cycle of shallow or performative interactions. Neither party feels safe to show their true selves this way.

The way you harshly judge others for small imperfections often starts becoming the way you judge yourself. You become hyper-aware of how your own behaviors, preferences or vulnerabilities might be perceived. Eventually, this reinforces a fear of authenticity.

In this environment, genuine connection struggles to take root. People end up hiding their complexity, humor or emotions to fit into someone else’s checklist, and the very openness that allows relationships to flourish is stifled.

A 2023 study published in Frontiers in Psychology explored the relationship between self-control, the ability to regulate impulses, restrain temptations and self-authenticity; the sense of being true to oneself.

Researchers followed nearly 3000 Chinese adolescents over time and measured both their self-control and self-authenticity at multiple points. They aimed to see if these traits were related, and how changes in one might influence changes in the other over time.

They found that adolescents with higher self-control tended to report greater self-authenticity.

Essentially, this was a reciprocal relationship. Researchers found that exercising self-control helps individuals act consistently with their true selves, while experiencing authenticity, in turn, strengthens their ability to self-regulate.

Normally, self-regulation allows a person to act in line with their values and maintain consistency in behavior. But if you constantly modify yourself to avoid rejection, you’re exercising self-control for the wrong purpose, which is to manage impressions instead of aligning with your authentic self.

This has two important consequences:

1. A reduced ability to connect genuinely. When both people are curating themselves to avoid judgment, neither gets to see the real person in front of them. This prevents trust and true emotional connection from forming.
2. Weakened self-regulation and well-being. Using self-control solely to avoid rejection or to mask one’s authentic self can be counterproductive. In contrast, when someone acts authentically while regulating their behavior appropriately, self-control and authenticity reinforce each other. This creates a positive feedback loop that improves confidence and social connection.

With icks being a major contributing factor, you might run the risk of turning self-regulation into a tool of self-censorship. True connection and intimacy don’t flourish under the weight of perfectionism or avoidance.

The more you focus on spotting flaws, the more you suppress your own quirks and vulnerabilities. Over time, this habitual judgment turns dating into a series of missed possibilities rather than an opportunity to discover real connection.

Holding Space For Imperfection

Because of ick culture, people might be forgetting to factor in the complexity of human beings. Relationships aren’t black and white. There’s always a grey area and space where growth and transformation can happen.

People are capable of evolving and showing up differently over time, often through the very process of being in a relationship.

For instance, when you’re triggered by a partner’s habit, you get the chance to reflect and adapt. Likewise, the support and feedback from a partner can encourage someone to practice patience, unlearn unhealthy patterns or discover parts of themselves they hadn’t acknowledged before. This doesn’t mean you choose to date someone for their potential, but it does mean that it’s important to stay open to evolving together.

Knowing what you don’t want in a partner is useful. But when that becomes the dominant lens, you risk cutting people off for superficial reasons before connection and growth have had the chance to emerge.

True intimacy thrives in the grey zone, where imperfections are not dealbreakers but invitations to understand, sometimes negotiate and eventually grow together.

A quirk that once seemed like an “ick” may become endearing, or even the very thing that challenges you to become a more open and compassionate version of yourself.

Could a fear of intimacy be holding you back from genuine connections? Take this science-backed test to find out: Fear Of Intimacy Scale