If you are stalking someone on TikTok, the chances are you will see their profile a lot. Whether their content shows up on your page more frequently because you visit their profile so often or whether you simply choose to visit their profile a lot, you are not alone.
When you’re on someone’s profile creeping on their activity, it is quite possible to follow him or her accidentally. This can be embarrassing – especially if you don’t want to be caught in the act!
All of a sudden, you think to simply unfollow the page and hope that they will never find out.
If you are worried about whether they will see you accidentally followed them and then learn that you unfollowed them immediately after, there is no surefire solution to this problem.
There are chances that the individual both sees your frantic mistake or does not see your frantic mistake.
Will Someone Know If I Follow Then Unfollow Them Quickly?
If you accidentally follow and unfollow someone on TikTok, it is likely that they will never know you did so.
Depending on how quickly you unfollow after accidentally following the account, the notification may never even be sent to their phone.
However, if they are reasonably active and you took too long to unfollow the profile, they are more likely to receive a notification and see the instance.
If they are not using their device when you unfollow them, then the notification will simply disappear as soon as you unfollow them, and they will likely never know you followed and unfollowed at all.
Even if they go to their notifications on TikTok, they will never be able to see that you followed and unfollowed their account because the notification gets deleted after you unfollowed them.
This also depends on the notification settings the user has enabled on their phone. If they don’t have notifications enabled for the TikTok application or they have them set to alert them upon receiving something other than a follow, the individual will not see that you have followed them unless they open the application and go check their notifications for that app.
If You Accidentally Follow Someone on TikTok then Block Them?
If you accidentally follow someone on TikTok and then block them, they won’t see that you followed them since you blocked them.
When you block them, all notifications from you will disappear along with your profile. There will be no way for them to view your profile as long as they’re logged into the specific account that you have blocked.
However, if you are wondering if you should block a certain someone after you follow and then unfollow them, then you shouldn’t.
This is rather unnecessary and ends up making you look worse in the long run – especially if you get caught actively blocking people on social media.
Let me offer a scenario. Say you unfollow someone, but they’re already on their phone. They receive the notification for you following them because you did not unfollow fast enough; however, when they go to your profile, it shows that you’re already not following them.
It could get especially awkward if they see the notification pop up on their phone, but it disappears upon them opening TikTok. This will look weird, and they can probably tell that it is an accident.
Now, let’s make this situation even worse. Say they saw the notification, went to your TikTok profile, and saw that you blocked them. The best thing to do after following someone accidentally is to unfollow them immediately.
What Happens If You Accidentally Followed Someone on TikTok?
When you are creeping on someone’s profile, or you see their content often on your For You page, accidentally the following someone is inevitable at some point – especially if you utilize TikTok frequently.
This does not appear to matter much if you do it to a stranger, but if it involves someone you know, this could make things awkward.
If you want to save yourself the personal embarrassment, unfollow them and hope that they never find out about your little accident. If you are worried about whether they will be able to tell you unfollowed them or not, this depends on a variety of factors.
If you follow and unfollow someone quickly on TikTok, the chances are that they will never see that you did it. Depending on how quickly you unfollow them after following, they may never even receive a notification to their device, even if they have notifications turned on for following alerts on that application.
However, if they’re active on their phone and they have alert notifications for new followers, they are likely to receive a notification and see that you followed them.
1. Were They Using Their Phone
If the individual is not using their device during the time you follow and unfollow them, then the notification will disappear immediately upon you unfollowing them.
Even if they go to their notifications on TikTok, they will not be able to see that you’ve followed them because the notification gets deleted as soon as you unfollow them.
There is no way to really tell if someone was using their phone when you followed and unfollowed them. This is why it is hard to use this reassurance for them to find out or an alternative.
You can use other applications that reveal when a user is active, like Facebook or WhatsApp, to see if they are currently using their phones. However, this does not always work.
Just because someone is on their phone does not mean that Facebook will show them as active. This will let you know if they were using their phones when you accidentally followed them.
2. If You Unfollow Them, Does The Notification Go Away
In their notification bar for their personal profile, the notification disappears upon you unfollowing the account.
It used to be that when you accidentally followed someone and then unfollowed them, the notification would stay on their phone but disappear on the application.
Recently, the notification has started to disappear on both the phone and the application upon being unfollowed.
If there is a glitch in their notifications section, this can cause the notification to sit in one location for longer than usual, allowing them to see that you had followed them initially.
Another thing that can affect this is whether they have their notifications disabled for TikTok or not. As mentioned previously, if they have their notifications disabled, then when you unfollow them, they will not see if you follow them because notifications are disabled.
They can turn off these notifications by tapping the gear-shaped Settings icon and going to that of the TikTok application itself.
There is a downside to this assumption. However – you won’t know if they did this, so you cannot allow it to reassure you that they won’t find out that you followed them.
3. Your Follow Might Be Clumped In With The Rest
If you accidentally followed them, it is highly likely that this post was at least somewhat trending. There is a possibility that you saw it on your For You page. If this is the case, it is possible that it was also on a lot more For You pages.
Surely some of these individuals also followed them. There is a chance that your username is simply clumped in with the usernames of various other people who followed the user.
Because of this, they will not likely see that you followed them unless they go through and check the following individually.
With TikTok, if someone’s post is heavy on the For You page, the people following them are primarily people that they don’t know. If this is the case, then it is highly likely that they haven’t even noticed that you have followed them.
4. If You Do It Fast Enough, The Follow Won’t Be Registered
When you unfollow them, it is possible that you did it so quickly that the following was never registered in the first place.
It usually takes a few moments for TikTok to register that someone has been followed and then send a notification to the individual to let them know.
If you unfollow them fast enough, then there will not have been enough time passed for TikTok to process the specific follow and send the user a notification.
If you are in a position where you only found out that you were following them a while later, this certainly does not apply to you.
5. Are They A Famous Creator?
If this person that you’ve followed is a famous creator, then you have even less to worry about. Famous creators get heaps of notifications, so one follows from someone they likely don’t know is likely not going to catch them by surprise.
They don’t even have to be famous.
If they put out a lot of content on a regular basis and they get high engagement, they’re constantly getting notifications sent to their phone, and in the event that you accidentally followed them, the chances of them knowing that you followed them are very slim to none.
What to Do After Accidentally Following Someone on TikTok
Knowing what to do after accidentally following someone on TikTok is crucial because it can make or break whether they get the notification or if they’re aware that you unfollowed them in the first place.
1. Disable Your Account
Again, disabling your account after you unfollow them is not necessary. Once you follow and unfollow quickly enough, it is unlikely that they will see a notification.
Whether they saw that you followed them or they didn’t see it, disabling your account is simply an extra step that you shouldn’t take.
To deactivate your account, use the following steps:
1. Tap Profile in the bottom right.
2. Tap the 3-line icon in the top right of the screen.
3. Tap Settings and Privacy.
4. Tap Manage Account.
5. Tap Delete Account.
6. Follow the instructions in the application so that you can delete your account.
Since the follow will not show up when you accidentally follow someone, you do not have anything to stop them from seeing that you followed them.
The only occasion you should be concerned about someone seeing that you accidentally followed them is if you took a long time to unfollow them.
If you unfollow straight away, you do not have to worry about the notification showing up. But if you took a long time, that means that they have likely seen the follow already, and there is no point in you doing anything else.
Even doing things like blocking them is useless at that point because they’ll know that you only did it because you were embarrassed about you knowing that you followed them.
2. Delete Your Profile Picture and Change Your Name
As soon as you accidentally follow someone, you can change your profile picture and username to something anonymous so that they never suspect it was you who actually followed them.
This means that you will be able to lurk privately through TikTok without the chance that that person you know will ever find out that you were stalking them.
How to Stop Accidentally Following People on TikTok?
Rather than someone being notified that you followed and then unfollowed them, you can prevent this from happening in the first place. There are a few things that you can do while using TikTok that will prevent you from making such a mistake in the first place.
1. Don’t Scroll Near The Follow Button
One way that you can accidentally follow someone involves clicking the follow button while scrolling through your For You page. To stop yourself from following them on accident, when scrolling, you need to stay away from the follow button.
The middle of the left lane of the post is the safest way to scroll, although it might feel more natural to use the right side. If you want to share the video or view their profile, then you need to be extra careful to make sure that you don’t click the follow button.
2. Airplane Mode
If you are on someone’s TikTok profile, scrolling through their content, then you can put your phone on Airplane Mode to help cover your tracks.
Before you do this, make sure to upload all of your pending content using a Wi-Fi connection or your personal data allowance. Once this is loaded, put your phone in Airplane mode.
If you accidentally follow them or like something accidentally, it will not be registered because your phone is not connected to the internet.
If you do accidentally follow someone, take your phone off Airplane mode and refresh their profile. Then, you will see that the profile was never followed.
3. Use Another Account
Some people have burner accounts that have no tie to their identity. If you do, you can use this to creep on TikTok profiles. The users of those profiles will never be able to tell that it was you who accidentally followed them.
If their account is public, then using your burner account is simple. You’ll be able to view their posts at pretty much any time. However, if their account is private, then you will have to follow them and be accepted in order to view their posts anonymously.
The key thing to keep in mind here is that there can be absolutely nothing that links your personal account and this burner account unless they suspect that you are the one behind the account.
Another thing you need to realize is that if they don’t have a large following, they may notice that a burner account is watching their stories and doesn’t follow them.
This can lead them to block that burner account because they will more than likely know that someone is creeping on them.
4. Use TikTok On Your Laptop
Using TikTok on your laptop will decrease the chances of you the following someone accidentally. Because you are not using your fingers, you will not be able to click the following button accidentally.
Of course, using TikTok on your laptop will not provide for the most immersive user experience, but it will alleviate any fears that you have of accidentally following people.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you accidentally follow someone on TikTok, it is not the end of the world. You are not alone, and there are steps that you can quickly take in order to ensure that they don’t receive the notification that you followed them.
Many of these steps are described in further detail above. Even if they notice that you followed them, however, it is not necessary to do things like block them or delete your account. Just roll with it. Best of luck.