The pressure to be the ‘it’ couple—fake Desi proposals and dance Reels

Illustration by Sonali Dub | ThePrint

India’s Got Cringe—and the front-runners are couples live-streaming their relationships on social media. It doesn’t matter if they’re cooking together, or “choosing different paths #heartbreakhurts”, we now get a play-by-play on the unstable modern love. And everyone wants to be the ‘it’ couple. This content market is where shame goes to die—wrapped in a lovey-dovey transition reel and trending audio. Blink twice and a Gen Z couple will pop up on your timeline oversharing everything they’ve done to and with each other since they first exchanged DMs. It unfolds like a trainwreck, and you can’t look away.

These are tricky times, Black Mirror (2011-) to CTRL (2024)—the repository is growing strong with unhinged love stories. The main characters of such cautionary tales aren’t bothered. That couple recording themselves running toward each other in slo-mo at the Delhi Metro has broken all shackles of cringe. So have couples simply meowing together into the camera. They don’t care if anyone throws up their lunch while watching them. And it’s not just an unabashed public display of affection, there’s also the public display of resentment. Five Times My Boyfriend Annoyed Me This Week, POV: He Always Says The Wrong Thing, POV: She Hates Your Friends—they want to tell you everything.

From Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit to OnlyFans—no corner of the internet is safe from couples. If one dance routine goes viral on TikTok, every wannabe influencer duo on Instagram will be recreating it in a week. Some couples stick to trend-hopping—whether it’s the guy lifting his girlfriend like a human dumbbell or one smacking the other in the face with a slice of cheese. And there’s the “surprise” genre of couples’ content. The realistic ones are the best—nothing says true love like a girlfriend travelling from north to south to surprise the boyfriend and he looks shocked out of his wits.

Some make educational videos on “Angry girlfriend ko kaise manate hain” (how to make up with your angry girlfriend). The girlfriend throwing slippers, cloth hangers, and PS5 at her man is simply acting in these videos. These online self-styled celebrity couples always celebrate every anniversary with full band baaja baraat. Recently, I spat out my water when I saw a “Five Tuesdays together” post but that’s just me being jealous. They’re still better than the ‘boyfriend/girlfriend reacts’ videos. Picture this—a guy shaves his beard into a goatee and his girlfriend gasps as if he just came back from the war. Then she starts crying because she can’t fathom how good-looking he is—yep, it’s all fake.

But then again, nothing’s more fake than desi proposal videos. Most of them are shot after their parents have already discussed all matters from dahej to DJ line-up. Perfectly dressed for the occasion—with the nail manicure matching the diamond’s shape—girls act as if they were ambushed. At this point, it’s a romantic skill that requires a heightened suspension of disbelief. In any case, it helps the big marriage propaganda.

All the ups and downs

We all know at least a couple of couples documenting their relationship in a joint Instagram account with a corny username. FearlesslyYours, Ibadat101, ToadLovesDove or some such. With no confirmation from their audience base, owners of these accounts are themselves adding #couplegoals to their posts. I know I am not the only one hating on them—fellow singles on Twitter are using pictures of conjoined toilets to trash them. For some unexplained reason, a girl from my college has added all her batchmates to the Close Friends list of her account with her boyfriend. Unwillingly, we all know her baby doesn’t like bhindi and that she is also quitting the green vegetable for him. When they fight, the joint account would go dark, only to come alive in a week with captions along the lines of, “Together through all ups and downs.”

These unsupervised curators of relationship content are well aware that they irritate people. They even call themselves cringe. Simple minds can’t comprehend what they are out to achieve. One Twitter couple recently went viral for their public breakup. The mudslinging happened in mean little tweets and the guy—accusing the girl of cheating—unleashed the sickest burn. “What do you expect from a girl with 28 Spotify followers?” Everyone is calling him insecure but I guess it was just a twisted attempt to land a brand deal.

There’s a special place in the psychiatrist’s ward reserved for couples who are cosplaying as relationship experts. They think their commitment to each other is enough to school everybody on the internet about dating. ‘How we resolve conflicts’ and it’s just the two of them light-tapping each other’s forehead. On the unserious frontier, girlfriends grill their boyfriends for cheating on them in their dreams—and the video is captioned ‘POV: He’s never annoyed of you’.

Maybe these cringe couples are actually happy in their relationships. But if you’re a couple flexing in HD about how you never fight with each other, I am just going to assume one of you is a hostage.

Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)