Some of you didn’t stay up all night watching a low-key traumatizing movie drama starring Ashton Kutcher and Logan Lerman, and it shows. Yes, I’m talking about The Butterfly Effect because the scientific theory of the same name seems to be popping off on TikTok. Except, instead of people obsessing over how one teeny tiny insignificant incident spiraled into a life-changing new reality (hopefully not as real as the shit going down in that movie, mind you), users are using the term as a catch-all phrase for fun life things, like meeting their S.O.
Now I get it, finding a decent human being to cohabitate within 2025 does feel like a miracle. But most of these TikToks appear to show examples of something closer to invisible string theory at best and, um, things working out well at worst. If you think I’m being a nit-picking stickler (TBH, you’re not wrong), hear me out: here’s the real meaning behind The Butterfly Effect and why TikTok is getting it wrong.
What is The Butterfly Effect?
@tara_langdale and to think his pickup line was “do you believe in love at first sight?” 😂😂😂 #butterflyeffect #coupleoutfits #datenight ♬ Take My Hand – Matt Berry
The Butterfly Effect, the founding father of chaos theory, is the concept that a change as small as the flap of a butterfly’s wings can result in drastically different outcomes within a system. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz developed the theory when he released his paper about weather patterns, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” while teaching at MIT. The good news is, Lorenz’s principle doesn’t imply that if you, IDK, forget to floss, you’re somehow responsible for a forest fire next door.
His famous butterfly graph, known as the Lorenz attractor, ultimately showed (by heating up gas and watching how it travels) that while making small changes to initial conditions can lead to a variety of wild outcomes, that variety is within limits. In the science world, the point of chaos theory is that things aren’t always as mathematically predictable as we once believed.
What is The Butterfly Effect Trend on TikTok?
@_abbytobi So glad I replied 🥹 otherwise we would’ve never gotten married in Italy 🤍 #butterflyeffect #hingetohusband #hinge #husband #love ♬ Ribs – Lorde
On TikTok (and in pop culture in general), chaos theory/The Butterfly Effect is often conveniently applied after the fact. Like, of course, now that you’ve already met the LOYL without planning it, it’s easy to build up the moment as some magical, statistically impossible happenstance when it was really the result of direct action and probably could’ve or would’ve happened with someone equivalent by making another similar choice.
Like, no shade for singing about how you found love in a hopeless place from the rooftops because it is hard out here, but the “butterfly wings” moment that brought you together would have to be a hell of a lot more niche than replying on a dating app (that you downloaded, made an account for, and planned to use) or choosing to get back with your ex (????) to fit the bill.
@kennysdigest A legitimate #butterflyeffect ♬ original sound – kennysdigest
This criticism still applies to those with wilder stories, TBH. Sure, it feels woo-woo AF when you almost didn’t do something, and then when you did choose to do it, something unexpectedly amazing happens, but realistically, it was a very direct chain of events. The point of the Butterfly Effect is that changes are limited in scope, very unpredictable, and sometimes don’t happen at all! So it’s less about something so magical happening that it has to be luck and more of a perspective on how many things can happen based on a small change.
So, TLDR, unless you can trace your outcome back to a moment as random as forgetting to floss on a Tuesday and you can spitball other dramatic outcomes that might’ve happened if you had done one tiny thing slightly differently, it probs makes more sense to call your situation fate and keep it pushing.
