‘Love Creep’, a term coined by Clemenger UnLtd, forms the basis of a new campaign describing how love can turn into a pattern of control – there’s a difference between a cosy night in every now and then, and consistently isolating you from friends and family.
A difference between caring that you eat well, to expecting a say in your body shape, or between wanting to know when you’ll be home, to needing to know your location at all times.
A new website, Lovecreep.nz helps young people experience it; validating those who feel controlled, waking users up to their emotional abuse (knowingly or not), and giving family and friends a way to broach the subject.
Zaffa Christian from the Ministry of Social Development says, “Love is filled with intense feelings that make control hard to spot and easy to deny. Lovecreep.nz helps young people explore what it looks, sounds and feels like, so they understand why the ‘love’ they’re experiencing doesn’t feel right. This is a tool that seeks to prevent behaviours becoming ingrained and potentially life threatening in relationships now and in the future.”
The experience uses real life examples (Love Bites) to educate people on how to spot controlling behaviours from isolation to surveillance, gaslighting, and more. It also enables them to create their own patterns of control based on what they may have experienced, seen, or used.
Brigid Alkema of Clemenger UnLtd says, “Controlling behaviour is difficult to understand if you haven’t experienced it. We wanted to push past observing someone being controlled, and instead elicit what it actually feels like. A simulation of what it’s like to go through Love Creep. Making you feel confused, small and worthless. The challenge was to make the individual Love Bites seem like they had loving intention.”
Matt Von Trott, Assembly says, “Lovecreep.nz was an opportunity to engage a young audience in a bold way. The challenge was assembling videos on-the-fly to empower users to edit their own experiences on their phones or desktop. This required generating adaptive live-streaming playlists, while trying to keep the experience simple and interesting to play with.”