It seems like all things viral are originating from TikTok these days, for better or worse. Among the many trends on TikTok today, a new one is emerging and hoo boy is it problematic because it is glorifying toxic boyfriend behaviour.
Speaking of TikTok, the GOAT team talk about how the platform could be the next big thing for music artists on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
If you go on TikTok and search “crazy boyfriend,” “psycho ex”, “psycho boyfriend” or stuff along those lines, you’ll find a worrying number of POV videos where dudes dressed like fkbois are scowling or doing something menacing towards the camera.
Just a quick search yielded a TikTok video with the caption “after years of you driving him crazy, your boyfriend catches you cheating for the last time” while a dude menacingly lip-synchs to the camera.
That only scratches the surface as there are a heap of other problematic vids, like a POV video with the caption “your crazy ex boyfriend kills your boyfriend because he’s jealous that you’re not with him” while a hoodie-wearing guy mimics a gunshot, and a POV video with “I’m the crazy ex-boyfriend and I still love you. u[sic] need to breakup with your boyfriend or he might get hurt” while a guy menacingly wields a baseball bat.
When asked by Vice why he jumped on this troubling toxic boyfriend viral thing, 16-year-old TikTok user Ryan Eskling explains how he was inspired by shows with abusive male leads, like Netflix’s You, saying “I was inspired by these shows to create different characters, as it seemed to attract the teenage demographic the most” and how he “was faced with a lot of comments from girls saying it’s attractive.”
That last comment from Esling highlights the worse part of this worrying toxic boyfriend trend on TikTok: how some girls are positively responding in the comments. It’s bad enough when guys are glorifying toxic behaviour for TikTok clout, but it’s worse when girls are romanticising and effectively normalising male violence.
Thankfully, these problematic TikTok videos have also copped criticism as there are a number of girls commenting how this trend is troubling, especially for those who have been in toxic relationships. One girl commented: “Can we stop glorifying abusive relationships? You wouldn’t be making cute lil TikToks about it if you actually knew what it felt like to be in one.”
Domestic violence and abusive relationships isn’t something young people should be glamourising on TikTok or creating characters out of, yet here we are and it’s all for stupid internet clout that has no real value. There’s a burden of responsibility on TikTok to regulate this sort of troubling content, yet it seems like they’re cool with anything as long as you’re good-looking or rich enough.
Seeing as how TikTok is an evil as hell platform during the best of times anyway, maybe just stay off the app altogether as that’ll end this problematic toxic boyfriend trend once and for all.
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