TikTok’s ‘Knee Thing’ Is The Ultimate Foreplay Move

TikTok has become synonymous with good hacks and nifty tricks. After homemade toner or organisation tips? Makeup fit for glasses wearers or niche book advice? The digital app is your go-to. It's also got its fair share of sex content (think one viral hack involving a pillow).

Elusively, TikTokers have been raving about one foreplay trick, in particular, that's known as the 'knee thing'. There are currently more than 127 million TikTok views related to the phase as users try to teach others the arousing act.

The 'knee thing' is a way to stimulate someone's clitoris. While in the middle of a makeout session, the other person (any sex can partake) angles their knee in between their legs, to their crotch. The person leading the knee thing will typically be on top, where they can gently move their knee around while applying a bit of pressure.

Others, like Rachel Ballinger, have pointed out that it's like the 'thigh thing' (essentially the same action but using one's thigh instead of their knee.

"If you're on top, you put your knee up so you're putting your thigh into their lady bits so when the grinding happens they're stimulated," Ballinger says on her podcast episode with Jojo Siwa.

As TikTokers share their particularly cryptic takes on the trend (primarily for censorship reasons), commenters are split between those still being confused by the 'knee thing' and those realising they had been doing it all along.

The tactic isn't anything particularly new; clit stimulation has been widely documented! As one colleague said, "that 'knee thing' reminds me of being a teenager".

Foreplay is important — a 2004 study of 152 straight cis men and women found that both genders wanted about 20 minutes of foreplay, but in reality, we're getting closer to 10 minutes. The popularity of the 'knee thing' trend is a reminder that sex is so much more than penetration.