gen z's toxic relationship with cheating
decoding the tiktok feeds of "the least loyal generation"
hidden beneath layers of dance challenges and makeup tutorials, a surprisingly sinister trend has been circulating on millions of young women’s feeds.
it’s called #ihatemybf, and it’s become gen z’s go-to hashtag for showcasing the endlessly creative ways they cheat on, lie to, and manipulate their unsuspecting boyfriends. from talking trash about his hairline to flirting with his father, absolutely no offense is too drastic to be meme’d. in fact, the more diabolical the premise, the more rabid young women flock to offer their support.
the comment sections on these posts are always a spectacle in themselves, brimming with enthusiastic replies like, “i love to see women in male-dominated fields,” and, “liking this because it’s relatable, NOT because it’s funny.” i even once scrolled past a comment from my seemingly demure ex-classmate that read, “cheating is only ok when i do it bozo. 🙄”
to the uninitiated eye, these memes look like proof that the podcast bros and reddit mods were right all along — that modern women are morally bankrupt nymphomaniacs with no respect for traditional values.
reality, however, is not that clear-cut.
to understand the sudden proliferation of #ihatemybf memes, we must examine the trend’s origins. this hashtag supposedly spawned after some guy on X said, “that phase where you slowly start hating your girlfriend is crazy 😭,” and hordes of men perked up to say they, too, have experienced the fated i hate my girlfriend phase of a relationship. this girlfriend slander prompted women across the nation to launch a swift counterstrike, and alas, the #ihatemybf trend was born.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
given this context, it’s unlikely that young women's taste for cheating memes is some mass confession of serial infidelity (which honestly sucks for me because that'd make a great headline). it’s more plausible that this trend is just the latest flare-up in gen z’s ongoing gender war — a relentless feedback loop of provocation and retaliation, engineered by and for the chronically online.
for many gen z women, the seeds of this online conflict were planted around 2017 — first with the cultural reckoning of #metoo, then with the explosive rise of dating content that repackaged shitty male behavior as female empowerment. the latter, most notably exemplified by the wildly popular podcast call her daddy, normalized a simple yet potent thesis: men are gonna do you dirty, but you can do them dirty too.
before we knew it, women everywhere were posting tips for bugging your man’s phone and proudly sporting “cheat on him” t-shirts. whether this yapping prompted actual behavioral shifts or just louder online posturing is up for debate, but the cultural impact was felt regardless. a new flavor of paranoia settled in across the gender divide.
#ihatemybf content marks the latest escalation in this online tit-for-tat, fueled by young women’s drive to claim a sense of control in the dating market. whether consciously or not, the women circulating cheating memes are waging a sort of ideological warfare — forcing men to experience the same type of insecurity that’s historically been their privilege to impose.
and it’s certainly not just young women approaching relationships with this defensive hostility. gen z men, especially in more conservative circles, are growing increasingly paranoid about the prospect of emotional betrayal. whether or not they’ve fully swallowed the red pill, millions of them have been exposed to the manosphere: a corner of the internet where women are often cast as hypergamous attention-seekers who are loyal only when it suits them.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
clearly, both gen z men and women are obsessed with cheating — discussing it… threatening it… getting weirdly invested in evolutionary psychology to figure out how to evade it... but drown out all the online noise, and one question remains: is everyone actually doing it?
a quick google search suggests yes. articles that call gen z “the most unfaithful generation” and others that claim, “vast majority of gen z are cheating on their partners” paint quite the foreboding picture of young people’s romantic prospects. pair these headlines with viral tiktoks that declare, “statistically, gen z is the least loyal generation,” and there’s a pretty compelling case that most of our peers are betraying each other.
i, however, suspect all of these claims are bullshit, so i sent an anonymous survey to my readers and asked them myself.
136 gen z men and women answered, “how common is cheating in your social circle?” and although it’s a relatively small sample size (i tried my best, ok?), their answers tell a very different story than the one being pushed online.
60% said cheating is rare — they hardly hear about it
38% said it’s somewhat common — they know a few cases
2% said it’s very common — most people they know have cheated
another narrative that has picked up media traction is that gen z is not technically cheating more, but rather opting out of monogamy all together. for instance, the new york post, fox news, and several other outlets have reported that 59% of gen z wants an open or polyamorous relationship — which surely sent half their readership into cardiac arrest. i just hope they read long enough to see that data was pulled from ashley madison: an app quite literally built to help people cheat on their partners.
though this data is clearly absurd, i ran another sanity check just to be thorough. i’ve personally seen too many hate comments on polyamorous couples’ tiktoks to believe gen z is the free-spirited bunch fox news makes us out to be. so, i asked my readers: which best reflects your thoughts on non-monogamy?
12% said i'm in / would be in a non-monogamous relationship
36% said not for me, but i get the appeal
39% said i think it's weird, but to each their own
13% said i think it's a bad relationship model for anyone
what those publications may be picking up on is that gen z has more progressive beliefs about sexuality on average, which is true, but what they fail to account for is that we’re also far more risk averse and far less promiscuous than our millennial and gen x counterparts. to put it plainly: gen z is quite slutty in theory, but not in practice.
if you think indulging in sexual content is cheating, then sure, our generation is doing it at olympic-level standards. but when i polled my gen z readers, only 11% said they consider watching porn in a relationship to be cheating. that number climbs to 25% for liking thirst traps on instagram, and spikes to 80% when it comes to swiping on a dating app.
people seem to weigh these micro transgressions based on how likely each is to lead to an offline encounter, and because technology can facilitate that in just a few taps, it’s easy to assume gen z is leaning into the ease of it all. but that assumption overlooks a key detail: when you’ve been swimming in a nonstop stream of hyper-sexualized content since middle school, there’s not much incentive to go and get the real thing (which might help explain why gen z is reportedly having less casual sex and craving more traditional commitments than their older counterparts).
even if we did want to cash in on this convenience and cheat our little hearts out, we’re also way more likely to get caught. 50 years ago your grandpa could start a whole second family and gaslight your grandma to the grave — but in 2025, between location sharing, snap scores, screenshot evidence, and unsolicited “hey girly” DMs, even the most talented of two-timers are struggling to succeed.
still, both gen z men and women point to some rampant, generation-wide infidelity as good reason to avoid vulnerability altogether. the thought of committing to someone only to end up betrayed feels so inevitable, so baked into the modern dating experience, that some would rather sit it out entirely, or arguably worse, stay stuck in a constant rotation of low-stakes, half-committed situationships.
the real tragedy here is that if each gender looked past the onslaught of sensationalized content fueling this mutual distrust, they’d probably realize there’s no real gender war. there’s just a mutual fear of getting hurt, and it’s this generational aversion to emotional discomfort, not some dramatic rise in infidelity, that’s holding both sides back from the kind of relationships they want.
Vulnerability is GAY. REAL men bottle up their feelings and drink until they piss the bed.
The online hyper “masculine” and hyper “feminine” that suggest gender wars are just closeted angry bisexuals