With the change of weather and cuffing season in full swing, single people are bound to feel slightly more pressure to partner up with someone new or reconnect with an ex. While the obvious choice for meeting potential partners might be dating apps or niche cultural interest sites, some teenagers on TikTok have a different method — manifestation.
It all started when a manifestation audio from life coach Amanda Clayton went viral on the app. “No matter what he is doing, no matter who he is with, he is always thinking of me. Everything is reminding him of me now,” she says. The responses from people who claim to have used the audio to manifest attention from a specific person began to roll in. “I’ve done this for the past two nights and accidentally manifested the wrong motherfucker,” wrote one creator. Others have asked how they can undo it after a partner apparently became “annoying and clingy” after using it.
Love manifestations have been around long before TikTok, practiced by spiritual teachers and gaining a large following on YouTube in recent years. They can be as simple as reciting “the love of my life is looking for me” or writing down the specific qualities of the person you’re trying to attract. Manifestation in general has also recently gone mainstream and become somewhat of a buzzword, as more and more young people turn from religion to New Age spirituality. Last year between March and July Google searches for the term rose by 669 percent, perhaps in an attempt to reclaim some semblance control in a difficult pandemic year. In simple terms, manifesting is the practice of focusing on aspirations with the purpose of making them real, which sounds completely harmless, right?
Unfortunately due to the viral nature of the TikTok algorithm, so-called manifestation audios like this one are now in the hands of teenagers who may have never searched for or gained any previous context to the rituals. Amanda’s manifestation alone has over 80k video responses and there are countless others that make up #manifestok. “I am the only one they desire, I am the only one they need,” says one video. Another TikTok suggests writing your partner — or ideal partner’s — name on a piece of paper and putting it under a heavy object to make them think of you instantly.
Aside from the videos being extremely creepy, spiritual workers have started to post warnings about the viral manifestations. Hypnotherapist and mindset coach Lydia Bachmeier says that “love affirmations” can actually be obsession spells or love spells, which are dangerous in the wrong hands. “All affirmations can be spells but it doesn’t mean that they are,” she explains in a recent video. “If they were saying this affirmation in the shower, it was definitely a spell.” Another spiritual creator on the app, Lina, warned people that “love spells will make them obsessed, but it won’t make them respect you or treat you right.”
Since casting a love spell is entirely different to manifesting love into your life, this brings in the question of free will. Could these viral manifestations turned spells be dangerous? LA-based diviner Porsche Little thinks so. “I think if you added a bit more ingredients to [Amanda’s] affirmation you’d find yourself in a love spell, and those rarely turn out good,” she says. “I think this manifestation might be a bit toxic, but I also think what’s truly putting this affirmation into play is Mercury being in retrograde. It’s no wonder why exes would be circling around the block.”
Porsche says that using manifestations like the viral ones on TikTok could actually block the potential of better things to come into your life. “I see these affirmations of being a bit more obsessive than progressive,” she says, explaining that if love isn’t received or reciprocated it could be dangerous to our mental health. Many of the videos going viral do claim to help you manifest a specific person who’s not currently in your life, instead of manifesting love in general or using manifestations as a couple to bolster an already healthy partnership. “If you’re in a mutual loving relationship where your partner reciprocates, it is way more likely that positive affirmations can strengthen your bond. Energy works best together, not when the opposite end is turning the other way.”
For those hoping to manifest a partner, Porsche reminds us to steer clear of focusing on a specific person. She recommends a more general manifestation: “The partner I seek, is also seeking me, and I now release any blocks that stand in between us,” to draw the right person in. Porsche made a YouTube tutorial and offers sessions with clients looking to properly manifest love, where she tells them to first write down a detailed description of what they’d want in a partner. This includes how they want to be loved, how they want to love others and what qualities the person they’re seeking has.
“You have to be so intentional when it comes to love manifestations to the point where you should be able to identify your lover if they came tomorrow,” she says. “Know exactly what you want but don’t have anyone particular in mind, because what we think might be the best for us could only just be a test.”
The truth is the majority of us make far too many bad decisions to be trusted to manifest a specific person that we want to come into our lives. There are also better ways to spend your time than reciting a potentially spiritually dangerous TikTok audio in the hopes it will make your toxic ex-boyfriend return. While one video says, almost threateningly, “When he tells me he thinks it won’t work but I know I can easily manifest him back”, we have to ask ourselves why we’re looking to summon people into our lives that clearly don’t want to be there?
As with all things in romance, we must take the viral affirmations as a lesson and warning that — cuffing season or not — you can’t force a compatible romantic partnership, you can only intentionally make space for it in your life. If this includes manifestations, it also needs to include action. “Don’t tell the universe you want a rich one and then entertain a broke one,” Porsche very wisely puts it. In a similar vein, maybe avoid using unhealthy TikTok manifestation audios if you’re looking for a healthy relationship.