"But there is something rather icky about the way everything, and I mean, everything, they do is made into content." It's very icky!!! People forget that you can just have a private bit and not film it into a skit for content. Combined couple accounts always weird me out!!!
and making private acts of kindness public makes it not fully *for* your partner anymore, which i feel like most people would get majorly resentful about. not to mention the fact that making it public for millions of fans means that hundreds of women will comment about how much they want to be with your partner....
Great essay! Beyond the points you have made already, one thing that feels slightly off about the “wife guy” trend is whether performative chivalry is ultimately a substitute for deeper understanding or connection. There is a saccharine, superficial quality to it. Pleasant sentiments and acts of kindness are better than the alternatives, but is this a Hallmark card alternative manifestation of heterofatalism, where nice words and gestures are an attempt to traverse a gulf of lack of understanding.
Completely agree! I think this is also why hetero relationships that are highly gendered make me uncomfy, beyond the way domestic labor ends up being unequally delineated
You've put into words something I've felt when I've seen it but couldn't articulate. There's something so performatively off-putting to me about those couples. I think what bothers me is the continuation of what I've been feeling towards video/picture-driven social media — the behind-the-scenes process of setting up, editing, and preparing each shot for it to feel "effortless" and "day-in-the-life" is just so off to me. I keep picturing behind the scenes.
The "when he's talking down on himself" meme makes me so sad for these couples 😭 why even date someone you look down on so much you would post that publicly? It's really giving boomer 'i hate my wife' vibes and its not cool or funny lmao
Agreeee I do think it's mostly appealing to young Gen Z/Gen Alpha who are in not-so-serious relationships that they already know aren't going to last... but I can't imagine speaking that way about someone I love!
I'm glad I read this till the end. I typically don't enjoy couple's content cos I think love should not be for content . I often wonder how many things they have to say "let's do that part again" or "we were not really in frame”. I used to film day in my life vids and sometimes I shake my head at the ridiculousness. With social media, almost anything is up for grabs. I do hope they know when to draw the line. Or they know when to stop acting
I deleted socials but sometimes i pop onto facebook reels if they get me with clickbait and i always get stressed that a majority of the people don’t realize how performative and fake it all is just for content 😭😭😭
Thats what bothers me so much about short form content creation. I consistently get a ton of views on short form when I purposefully manipulate the viewer. My highest performing video (5M+) was when I intentionally and purposefully created a divide between the viewers and purposefully ragebaited others. Its soooo moronic.
I feel like John Mulaney is a poster child for this too. While he would express fondness for his wife in his sets, his fans ran with this to a parasocial degree and placed the mantel of King of the Wife Guys on his head.
When their marriage fell apart a few years ago, fans acted like they’d been personally betrayed.
All I could think at the time was, you know that most now-divorced people like each other until they don’t, right?
Great work. I have a loving and kind husband (we’re Millennials) and it’s exciting for us to break the Boomer “my wife” joke chains. I definitely wince at any “kind gestures” performed from one spouse to the other for the world. And this is going to make me sound like an asshole but….Hunter makes my gaydar go off soooo harrrd. Love love love nice, kind guys but there’s a difference
There’s a Reddit thread that’s allllll over the Hunter gay theory… I was gonna discuss but didn’t wanna open that can of worms, thank you for bravely going there
Yeah I mean it sounds like a surface-level blow that I’m sure he’s dealt with plenty and he seems like a cool guy! Just….the dynamic is different when someone is closeted
I really like your point at the end that this is how Gen Z, and now more primarily Gen Alpha, are learning how to treat their partners — no matter how dystopian and icky that feels. I fear this is also exactly why manosphere influencers try to target younger people😔
Thank you! And yeah, I think that's also part of why the content in these videos is really dumbed/watered down, so very young audiences can easily digest it...
This is what I came to say too. Young folks learn how to behave from socializing, and socializing is happening online now, probably to a scary amount. So overall I like the sticky sweet couple videos, just not necessarily in my feed.
It is, and it feels icky because they should be learning from their parents. The normalization of divorce and single parenting has taken a lot from the kids.
This was such a sharp observation about the performance of modern relationships online, especially the distinction you made between genuine affection and affection that constantly needs an audience. I thought your point about certain parts of love losing their sacredness once they become content was really true. The part about social media functioning as a kind of relationship manual for younger people felt important and honestly a little sad. A lot of people really are learning how to love, communicate, and perform partnership through influencers now, so it makes sense that relationships start taking on this scripted, hyper-visible quality. Your comparison between millennial sincerity and Gen Z irony was especially good too because both feel like different reactions to the same uncertainty around intimacy and gender expectations online.
i guess sometimes it can feel like these relationships and cute little moments are being orchestrated more to provide daydream material for the audience featuring their crush, rather than them being… actual things they like/want to do with/for each other.
Another example of how social media rewards people for extracting the good elements of their life. Its a content formula that seems to work particularly well:
find something in your life that is enviable or that other people want record it, dramatize it and monetize it. Selling the best moments of your life online to allow people a vicarious few moments of happiness sounds depressing. but compared to the prospect of working full time, it becomes the preferable alternative for many.
Social media is very effective at making us envy the lives of others and this is part of the reason. Everyone has something in their life thats missing. For many young people this is a romantic relationship and life partner. Maya and Hunter have, or at least appear to have, a very loving relationship and they do a good job of recording, dramatizing and showing it off. their viewers can experience a sort of artificial window of what that kind of life would look like and momentarily forget that they aren't satisfied or fulfilled.
Super interesting article and as a millennial I know both these couples, mostly against my will. While I think their relationship is probably genuinely loving, the para-social relationship between viewer and creator can get emotionally damaging very quickly (on both sides).
Also agree with another commenter who said that the performance of it makes it feel saccharine and superficial even if it isn't. I also do think its an unrealistic and pretty one-sided representation of a healthy relationship.
"But there is something rather icky about the way everything, and I mean, everything, they do is made into content." It's very icky!!! People forget that you can just have a private bit and not film it into a skit for content. Combined couple accounts always weird me out!!!
and making private acts of kindness public makes it not fully *for* your partner anymore, which i feel like most people would get majorly resentful about. not to mention the fact that making it public for millions of fans means that hundreds of women will comment about how much they want to be with your partner....
Agree agree agree!
we don’t know that everything they do is content, though. they might hate each other for all we know.
Great essay! Beyond the points you have made already, one thing that feels slightly off about the “wife guy” trend is whether performative chivalry is ultimately a substitute for deeper understanding or connection. There is a saccharine, superficial quality to it. Pleasant sentiments and acts of kindness are better than the alternatives, but is this a Hallmark card alternative manifestation of heterofatalism, where nice words and gestures are an attempt to traverse a gulf of lack of understanding.
Completely agree! I think this is also why hetero relationships that are highly gendered make me uncomfy, beyond the way domestic labor ends up being unequally delineated
I agree.
You've put into words something I've felt when I've seen it but couldn't articulate. There's something so performatively off-putting to me about those couples. I think what bothers me is the continuation of what I've been feeling towards video/picture-driven social media — the behind-the-scenes process of setting up, editing, and preparing each shot for it to feel "effortless" and "day-in-the-life" is just so off to me. I keep picturing behind the scenes.
Omg I know, imagining the BTS setup of those "candid" videos of couples cuddling on the couch and stuff is spooky
The "when he's talking down on himself" meme makes me so sad for these couples 😭 why even date someone you look down on so much you would post that publicly? It's really giving boomer 'i hate my wife' vibes and its not cool or funny lmao
Agreeee I do think it's mostly appealing to young Gen Z/Gen Alpha who are in not-so-serious relationships that they already know aren't going to last... but I can't imagine speaking that way about someone I love!
“airport self-help book platitudes” 😭😭😭
I had just passed some airport self help books so it was topical
I'm glad I read this till the end. I typically don't enjoy couple's content cos I think love should not be for content . I often wonder how many things they have to say "let's do that part again" or "we were not really in frame”. I used to film day in my life vids and sometimes I shake my head at the ridiculousness. With social media, almost anything is up for grabs. I do hope they know when to draw the line. Or they know when to stop acting
I deleted socials but sometimes i pop onto facebook reels if they get me with clickbait and i always get stressed that a majority of the people don’t realize how performative and fake it all is just for content 😭😭😭
*maya and hunter, etc
Thats what bothers me so much about short form content creation. I consistently get a ton of views on short form when I purposefully manipulate the viewer. My highest performing video (5M+) was when I intentionally and purposefully created a divide between the viewers and purposefully ragebaited others. Its soooo moronic.
I was waiting for a mentioned of the most infamous wife guy so far.. “Ned”.
ughh i know it's almost sacreligious that I didn't mention him but I feel like he's been thinkpiece'd to death already
The main wife guy was Ted from Try Guys who ended up cheating on his wife whom he talked about non stop in content
I feel like John Mulaney is a poster child for this too. While he would express fondness for his wife in his sets, his fans ran with this to a parasocial degree and placed the mantel of King of the Wife Guys on his head.
When their marriage fell apart a few years ago, fans acted like they’d been personally betrayed.
All I could think at the time was, you know that most now-divorced people like each other until they don’t, right?
Ned, but yes, that’s the Wife Guy trope I thought of immediately, the one who acts obsessed with their wife but is also secretly cheating regularly
NED! Right, I didn’t fact check. Thank you
Great work. I have a loving and kind husband (we’re Millennials) and it’s exciting for us to break the Boomer “my wife” joke chains. I definitely wince at any “kind gestures” performed from one spouse to the other for the world. And this is going to make me sound like an asshole but….Hunter makes my gaydar go off soooo harrrd. Love love love nice, kind guys but there’s a difference
There’s a Reddit thread that’s allllll over the Hunter gay theory… I was gonna discuss but didn’t wanna open that can of worms, thank you for bravely going there
Yeah I mean it sounds like a surface-level blow that I’m sure he’s dealt with plenty and he seems like a cool guy! Just….the dynamic is different when someone is closeted
I really like your point at the end that this is how Gen Z, and now more primarily Gen Alpha, are learning how to treat their partners — no matter how dystopian and icky that feels. I fear this is also exactly why manosphere influencers try to target younger people😔
Well written though! Thanks for sharing it
Thank you! And yeah, I think that's also part of why the content in these videos is really dumbed/watered down, so very young audiences can easily digest it...
This is what I came to say too. Young folks learn how to behave from socializing, and socializing is happening online now, probably to a scary amount. So overall I like the sticky sweet couple videos, just not necessarily in my feed.
It is, and it feels icky because they should be learning from their parents. The normalization of divorce and single parenting has taken a lot from the kids.
This was such a sharp observation about the performance of modern relationships online, especially the distinction you made between genuine affection and affection that constantly needs an audience. I thought your point about certain parts of love losing their sacredness once they become content was really true. The part about social media functioning as a kind of relationship manual for younger people felt important and honestly a little sad. A lot of people really are learning how to love, communicate, and perform partnership through influencers now, so it makes sense that relationships start taking on this scripted, hyper-visible quality. Your comparison between millennial sincerity and Gen Z irony was especially good too because both feel like different reactions to the same uncertainty around intimacy and gender expectations online.
Thank you so much!!
i guess sometimes it can feel like these relationships and cute little moments are being orchestrated more to provide daydream material for the audience featuring their crush, rather than them being… actual things they like/want to do with/for each other.
It’s true! The relationship content creators are more so surrogate boyfriends/girlfriends
surrogate boyfriends omg😭 but this is the perfect way to put it
This is hilarious and very true.
Another example of how social media rewards people for extracting the good elements of their life. Its a content formula that seems to work particularly well:
find something in your life that is enviable or that other people want record it, dramatize it and monetize it. Selling the best moments of your life online to allow people a vicarious few moments of happiness sounds depressing. but compared to the prospect of working full time, it becomes the preferable alternative for many.
Social media is very effective at making us envy the lives of others and this is part of the reason. Everyone has something in their life thats missing. For many young people this is a romantic relationship and life partner. Maya and Hunter have, or at least appear to have, a very loving relationship and they do a good job of recording, dramatizing and showing it off. their viewers can experience a sort of artificial window of what that kind of life would look like and momentarily forget that they aren't satisfied or fulfilled.
Super interesting article and as a millennial I know both these couples, mostly against my will. While I think their relationship is probably genuinely loving, the para-social relationship between viewer and creator can get emotionally damaging very quickly (on both sides).
Also agree with another commenter who said that the performance of it makes it feel saccharine and superficial even if it isn't. I also do think its an unrealistic and pretty one-sided representation of a healthy relationship.