Got 'the ick'? Why this little word is a big problem.

In her notes app, 26-year-old Dani Coco has a list. Items include “posing with fish” and “weird flexes.”

It’s her list of online dating “icks,” behaviors or profile descriptions that are so instantly repulsive to her she can’t look past them. Coco estimates that the list is about 50 items long. Her running tally of things that give her “the ick” on in-person dates is shorter “but always growing,” Coco tells Yahoo Life.

Wearing sandals, chewing, audible breathing and blond hair are all things that have given other young women the ick, according to their social media posts. It’s a three-letter word that became inescapable on reality TV, then on social media and now in the IRL dating scene, especially for Gen Z. It’s spread to other generations too, and even made its way into the Netflix series Nobody Wants This, where Kristen Bell’s character, Joanne, suddenly gets the ick over her new boyfriend’s (Adam Brody) clothes and use of the Italian word “prego” (the title of the episode is, in fact, “The Ick”).

You have to admit, it’s a catchy, TikTok-friendly way to describe that familiar feeling when someone does something — often something small and trivial — that viscerally turns you off so thoroughly that you can never see them the same way again.

But is the ubiquity of the ick just a harmless TikTok trend, or a signal of something gone awry in dating culture? We tried to find out.

The ick: An origin story

Love Island U.K. star Olivia Attwood is credited with coining the term, at least on the public stage. She first uttered “the ick” on a 2017 episode, and soon the rest of the reality show’s female cast was using it too.

The term simmered in the cultural zeitgeist for a few years before becoming a running theme in Season 7 of Netflix’s reality dating show Love Is Blind. “The ick” was referenced so often — notably by two female contestants who never seemed to quite click with their matches — that some viewers said the whole season gave them the same feeling.

TikTok, naturally, loved the phrase. Users, most of whom are young women, had a field day posting videos about what gave them the biggest icks and asking others to share theirs. A viral, not-safe-for-work rap song was even born out of the trend (and then used as the music for many more ick posts).

Social media is where Coco (a pseudonym the marketing entrepreneur uses for her online presence) initially heard the term. That was “the first time I put a name to the feeling,” she tells Yahoo Life. “I think most of us have felt it when someone does something, a small thing, that inexplicably horrifies you.” Now, getting the ick is an unfortunate mainstay of her romantic life. “The dating scene in San Diego is kind of rough, so it’s happened unlimited times,” Coco says.

Things she’s gotten the ick over, in person: A guy showed up to their plans 10 minutes late, wearing flip-flops. “I’m on a first date with a man whose toes are out,” she recalls thinking. That was an ick. Another man asked her out and insisted on treating her to a nice dinner. “As we’re leaving, he’s like, ‘I guess I’m eating beans and rice for the rest of the week,’” she says. Coco thought to herself, You created the situation! A definite ick.

Jennie Rosier, an associate professor of communication studies who teaches an undergraduate class on romantic relationships at James Madison University, started hearing “the ick” on Love Is Blind (a favorite show of hers, from a sociological experiment standpoint) and from her students. “It’s a hilarious phenomenon to me,” she tells Yahoo Life.

So, Rosier decided to study the ick. Her analysis of more than 100 TikTok videos fell into two camps.

One group of users and commenters bought into the legitimacy of the ick entirely. “There’s a sense of empowerment going around those kinds of videos, saying that [the ick] is your gut intuition and you should follow that,” she explains. Other people thought that the ick was completely ridiculous and an invalid response to someone’s usually innocuous behavior. Icks ranged from “objectively outrageous, like someone’s ick being a man breathing, which humans must do to stay alive” to behaviors that could be indicative of more serious issues. Reactions tended to reinforce that the ick was, indeed, icky, or to make “a mockery of the women having the icks,” says Rosier.

And neither of those responses is great or, for that matter, new, she adds. On one hand, degrading those who made the videos as “dumb” is a repetition of old, harmful stereotypes about hysterical women. On the other hand, praising videos about getting the ick has a reinforcing effect that, Rosier believes, is genuinely coming between young women and potential romantic partners.

The problem with the ick

Getting the ick, Rosier says, “is one of the most dismissive things I’ve ever heard.” Dismissive, or avoidant, is one of four attachment styles that describe how people behave in close relationships; the other three are secure, anxious and disorganized. Dismissively or avoidantly attached people tend to highly value their independence and eschew intimacy with others. “They tend to have relatively high opinions of themselves and low opinions of other people; they think, ‘I’m amazing and other people would be lucky to be in my presence.’” And among Gen Z, dismissive attachment styles, as indicated by the rise of the ick, are on the rise, Rosier’s research suggests.

Historically, men are more likely to be dismissive, whereas women are more likely to be anxiously attached. But Rosier believes that more young women are adopting the dismissive attachment style, and that many of the dating habits adopted by Gen Z are inherently dismissive.

That’s not all bad. Dismissive people “can be very goal-motivated and independent, and appear very confident,” Rosier says. “Those can be very attractive qualities.” On the other hand, “the highly dismissive adult lives on an island,” she says. They tend to struggle to connect with others because they don’t think they need anyone else (and don’t want to). They may also “disassociate from uncomfortable feelings” and avoid intimacy.

That can make it very difficult to form relationships. Rosier suspects that Gen Z-ers really do want to form relationships, but are perhaps unwittingly getting in their own way. Driven in part by a desire to stay on trend with their peers and not be perceived as “too much,” Gen Z-ers are “reluctantly participating in these dismissive acts,” she says. “They don’t really want to do these things.”

Coco knows what she does want: a relationship. “I’m looking for something serious, but a lot of these men leave something to be desired,” she says.

Avoidance or assertiveness?

Rosier set out to study the ick on TikTok because the platform is “such a communication vessel for Gen Z and they are socially constructing their lives [there],” she says. The ick has become a part of the lexicon for young, very online people. However, it’s not the only idea circulating there. TikToks explaining dismissive-avoidant triggers and attachments may not get the millions of views that ones about the ick have, but there are plenty of them out there.

As many icks as Coco has, she’s well aware of the dangers of avoidance and tries to analyze what triggers her repulsions (her mother was, after all, a therapist for many years, she notes). “A lot of times when I do get that ick feeling, it’s an indicator of something bigger coming to a head,” she says. “I try to listen to that and ask, ‘OK, am I just being avoidant or am I actually grossed out by that thing?’”

When her date made the comment about the beans and rice, Coco made a genuine effort to get past it. She shared that it had bothered her, he apologized and Coco tried to give it a real shot. “But something like that, it’s indicative of a worldview or how they see relationships,” she says. His comment suggested to Coco that the man was “very competitive financially, and it was the gateway to getting a better sense of how he actually saw things.”

Coco doesn’t see the notion of the ick as getting in the way of her dating life. It just gave her a name for something she’d been experiencing and struggling to identify. But she also recognizes that it’s not operating that way for everyone. “I jokingly call one of my best friends ‘the queen of the ick’ because I’m like, Girl, it might just be you at this point,” Coco says. “I think people sometimes get the ick as a way to not push themselves and try to be serious” in a relationship, she adds.

Rosier and Coco are in agreement: The key is identifying the difference between an avoidant ick and an indicative one. Some helpful litmus tests include asking yourself whether the person who gave you the ick is a good human, whether they meet your needs and whether they’re ready to grow with you as you evolve in the future. “If it’s trivial, like skipping or wearing shorts” — real examples from the TikToks Rosier studied — “I hope that most people would step back and realize that those don’t matter in the big picture,” she says.

On the flip side, there’s one ick — maybe the ultimate ick — Rosier says women should absolutely listen to: “If he speaks to his mother or sister in a disrespectful way, he will speak to you that way,” she says.