The ick

The ick is a sudden, often trivial turn-off that makes someone you liked seem unattractive, sometimes for good. The way he runs for a bus. The way she says "pacifically". Unlike a red flag, which is about values or how someone treats people, the ick is about a quirk.

Updated October 4, 2026

Means

Sudden, often trivial, turn-off

First seen

1998 (Ally McBeal, per Merriam-Webster); popularized by Love Island in 2017

Related terms

Red flags, Green flags, Beige flags, Situationship, Ghosting

In Swedish

The ick

In one small online study, 64% of single adults said they had had the ick (Collisson et al., 2025). The reasons they gave were mostly small.

Signs you have the ick

Disappointment usually builds over weeks. The ick lands in one go, attached to a scene you could describe to a friend in a sentence.

• You can name the moment. A specific sneeze on a specific Tuesday.
• The attraction dropped. It did not fade. You liked them at the start of dinner. By dessert you did not.
• You keep replaying it. The same five seconds, usually right when they lean in.
• Small things start stacking up. Once it has started, you notice how they hold a fork and how they spell “hahaha”.
• The reason is slightly embarrassing. You would not want to tell them it was the way they ran for the bus.
• It is about them, not about how they treat you. They were kind, on time and interested. You still flinch.

If that last point does not fit, and the trigger was something they did to you or to someone else, it is probably not the ick. Nor is finding out that the photos were five years old, which is kittenfishing.

Ick vs red flag vs real incompatibility

All three can end things after a date or two. What separates them is what the reaction is about, and that decides what to do with it. The split below is a common framework in dating advice, not a research finding.

The ick is about aesthetics, mannerisms and quirks. How someone chews, dances, texts or sneezes. Nothing about it is wrong, morally. You just cannot unsee it.

A red flag is about values and behavior: how they treat you, the waiter, their ex, the truth. Being curt with staff can look like a small moment. It is not a quirk.

Real incompatibility is a mismatch in what you want. Kids or no kids. A relationship or something looser. Nobody did anything wrong, and waiting will not fix it.

Writing in Psychology Today, Sanna Balsari-Palsule adds a fourth word, the “nick”: a small annoyance that fades as you get to know someone. You usually only find out afterward which of the two you had. A quirk that bothers nobody and changes nothing is what people call a beige flag.

The ick also runs the other way from love bombing. There, someone floods you with affection before they know you. Here, your own interest drains away over one bad sneeze.

Ick examples (the ick list)

The same handful turn up again and again in TikTok videos and group chats. Treat this as internet folklore. Nobody has counted which ones are most common.

• Running for a bus, bag bouncing.
• Chasing a ping-pong ball across the floor.
• A very small backpack on a grown adult.
• Calling the waiter “boss”.
• A baby voice, used on purpose.
• Clapping when the plane lands.

Our reading is that most of them share a shape. An adult loses a little dignity over something small, in public. None of them says anything about whether the person would make a good partner. That is what makes the ick hard to argue with, and hard to justify.

What to do about it

1. Name the trigger, to yourself. “He clapped when the plane landed” is more useful than “something felt off”. Be specific, even if it is embarrassing.
2. Sort it. Is it a mannerism, or is it about how they treat people? The section above is the test.
3. If it is a mannerism and the rest was good, give it one more date. Good meaning you saw green flags elsewhere in the evening. This is our rule of thumb, not a finding. If the moment has shrunk to a funny story by the end, it was a nick. If it is still all you can see, more dates are unlikely to help.
4. If it is a value, treat it as a red flag. It was a red flag in a silly costume, and it gets the same response.
5. If it does not lift, end it in a sentence. Do not ghost. “I’ve enjoyed meeting you, but I don’t see this going further” is enough. They do not need to hear about the bus.
6. If you get the ick with everyone by date two, look at the pattern. In the study, people more prone to the ick also scored higher on narcissism and on perfectionism aimed at others (Collisson et al., 2025). That does not make you either. It does suggest checking the bar before blaming the next person.

What the research says

The research is thin. The main study so far is by Collisson, Saunders and Yin, published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2025. They surveyed 125 single adults aged 24 to 72, recruited online. We read the published summaries in PsyPost and BPS Research Digest, not the full paper, so the figures below come through those.

Of the 125, 64% had experienced the ick, once they had been given a definition. Of those, 26% ended things right away and 42% ended them later. Women reported it more often than men, 75% against 57% (Collisson et al., 2025). Getting the ick went with higher disgust sensitivity, higher narcissism and other-oriented perfectionism, which means holding other people to very high standards (Collisson et al., 2025).

The limits matter. The answers were self-reported, and the authors say the sample was slightly underpowered, meaning a bit small for what they tested. The study shows which traits go with getting the ick. It does not show that the ick predicts anything about the relationship. The idea that disgust evolved to protect us from poor partners is the authors’ interpretation, not a result. Balsari-Palsule notes there is no evidence that the ick predicts whether a relationship works out (Balsari-Palsule, 2024).

On the brain side, Georgetown neuroscientist Tom Sherman suggests the anterior insula may be involved, and raises the possibility that the ick is a “homeostatic error”. He also says there is little substantive research on the ick (Georgetown University, 2025).

The word is older than the apps. Merriam-Webster says “ick” as a noise of disgust has been in print since at least the mid-20th century. It credits the noun to a 1998 episode of Ally McBeal. Ally tells Renee: “Since he’s my boss I don’t want to go out with him just to get hit with the ick.” It also notes a 2003 episode of Sex and the City. Friends had the “ick factor” in 1995, a relative rather than the source. Love Island’s third series popularized the ick in 2017, through contestant Olivia Attwood (Brandwatch), and TikTok took it further under #theick from June 2020 (Know Your Meme).