The “berries and cream” TikTok trend has finally been replaced with a new trend: “Couch Guy”. Sadly, “Couch Guy” isn’t as uplifting and fun as “berries and cream” was. This trend started after a girl posted a TikTok surprising her boyfriend, AKA “Couch Guy”, at college. She made the video with the song “Still Falling for You”, by Ellie Goulding, which is a common trend on TikTok that people do with romantic and cute videos. However, many users didn’t think this video fit the narrative of the song. In the video, “Couch Guy” is in his dorm room, but he isn’t alone. When his girlfriend walks in, he is sitting on the couch with two other girls. After noticing his girlfriend, he looks completely shocked, but not an excited and happy shock, and is delayed in standing up to greet her. It looked more like he got caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing rather than being surprised by his long distance girlfriend.
Once this video went viral, other users started to come up with theories and investigate the TikTok. In addition to him looking shady and barely standing up for his girlfriend, something other users noticed was his phone. In the beginning of the video, he doesn’t have his phone in his hand. However, as the video progresses, he seems to lean into the girl next to him and the phone suddenly appears in his hand. This made users believe that the girl next to him had his phone, but once his girlfriend entered the room, the girl sneakily passed the phone back to him. Pretty weird, right? Another thing TikTok users noticed was a hair tie on his wrist. Who knows, maybe he uses hair ties for his own hair. But it seemed a little suspicious as he doesn’t have long enough hair to put it up with a hair tie. People began to assume that the hair tie belonged to one of the girls he was sitting with. Not only were these two girls acting strangely bizarre in the video, but his friends who let his girlfriend in the room were as well. It almost seemed like they knew their friend was on the couch with the two girls and had set him up, as they were laughing in the background. Although these are just theories, the video is obviously very weird and uncomfortable. There is definitely something off with the situation. The video now has 60 million views and the girlfriend has responded to the backlash, defending her relationship and telling others not to assume about it.
Not only have people been commenting negative things, but millions of people have been recreating this TikTok with the hashtag, #couchguy. In all honesty, I do feel bad for this girl as the video may have been blown out of proportion. I doubt she would have ever thought this is how the internet would have reacted. However, she posted a public video for everyone to see, and has yet to take it down. But hey, If you don’t want to be judged or talked about, don’t publicly post a video on TikTok for millions of people to watch and share. Additionally, she could have deleted it once she started seeing the negative comments that were being said. This is a clear example of how social media has gotten extremely toxic. Social media can take something and completely turn it into something that it is not, especially on TikTok. People need to be careful about what they post and share. Social media culture has gotten ruthless and certain posts could ruin someone’s life. Once something is posted, it never can actually be “deleted”. Furthermore, I do feel bad for her in regards to her not knowing what she and every other girl deserves in a relationship: respect. If you take the two girls out of the equation, he still barely reacted to her walking into the room, after she traveled all that way to surprise him. It took quite some time for him to even stand up for her! I would hope if I had a long distance significant other, they would at least have the decency to stand when I entered the room and be excited to see me.
For all we know, “Couch Boy” could be an extremely loyal boyfriend who deep down was excited to see his girlfriend. However, what most people are agreeing on is that he is extremely close to being unfaithful to her or has already been unfaithful. Sadly, the TikTok world will probably never know the truth behind this video.