What Does 'But If You Asked Me On A Deeper Level' Mean? The TikTok Confessions Trend Explained

If you asked me how I felt about this TikTok trend, I'd say that it was just another silly Zoomer way of oversharing. But if you asked me on a deeper level, I'd say that it's really giving Tumblr, a mood board meme that expresses deep and sometimes incomprehensible feelings over a dreamy soundtrack in a way that sweetly reeks of adolescence. Let's dive into this TikTok mini-memoir trend, and explain where "If you asked me on a deeper level" comes from and what it means.

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Where Does 'If You Asked Me On A Deeper Level' Come From?

People have long used TikTok to share their deeper feelings. Although the app may have a reputation as a place for teenagers dancing and brainrot memes, it's also a public record of how people feel and develop. A precursor to 'if you asked me on a deeper level' was a trend called 'if you ask me when I'm alone,' which emerged in 2023. The earliest postings using the "deeper level" text became popular in the spring of 2024.

What Does 'If You Asked Me On A Deeper Level' Mean?

Each of the four slides of the format brings you into closer intimacy with the original poster. By the time you get to the fourth slide, which is a wall of text describing how the person really feels about something, you've invested three finger swipes and several seconds of emotional labor. Some posts, of course, are not slideshows but videos that cut between four different parts, but the overall structure remains the same.

The meme is about unmasking. There is one layer of knowing a person where they'll simply say things that are straightforward and bland about a topic, but then there's another layer of knowing them where they'll say what they actually think. The TikTok trend allows people to perform themselves as beings with a "deep down" inside of them, as people with interiority. It also allows them to offer that intimacy to strangers on the app.

How Do People Use 'If You Asked Me On A Deeper Level'?

Early postings of the format used it to discuss pretty serious matters, like the way users felt about their parents or the places they were from. Other postings were… less serious. Dogs shared how they felt on a deeper level about their disgusting habits, or friends joked that their deep feelings for one another were actually horror and disgust. And, like what eventually happens with every meme, brands got in on the action.

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To learn more about "If you asked me on a deeper level," check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry on the meme and TikTok trend.