Especially when you're trying to surprise a boyfriend who just went away to college. If you think that's a lot, the video even made it onto morning show The View, where host Sunny Hostin said, "I don't think surprises are a good idea. RELATED: 'I was ghosted for two years by a fake identity': Woman reports missing boyfriend but police say he doesn't exist
#Tik tok couch Patch
Internet users have contributed to what has been labelled a 'Couch guy slander TikTok', where people have started examining clues from the video to find out more about Robbie and his relationship with his female dorm mates.īrand accounts have started contributing to the discussion, too. Condom brand Trojan pointed the "coloured foils" on the table, while sweets brand Sour Patch Kids commented "sour then sus".īarbara Corcoran of Shark Tank even got involved, commenting "use these two words wisely Lauren, 'I'm Out'". if you can become a Tik Tok, you will definitely be able to do it.' After sitting down, Zhou Yi looked at Huang Jia, who was sitting on the other sofa. RELATED: Tiktok video blamed for shortage of rice paper wraps as dumpling recipe goes viral So… why has it become a TikTok meme? The tag #couchguy has been viewed more than one billion times as people continue to parody, duet and investigate the original video. TikTok users, brands and celebrities have all jumped on the bandwagon and have created a literal subculture within the app. Stirred to make a TikTok of my own to quell the increasing hate, I posted a video reminding the sleuths that “not everything is true crime”-which commenters resoundingly deemed “gaslighting.” Lauren’s videos requesting that the armchair investigation stop were similarly dismissed as more evidence of my success as a manipulator, and my friends’ entreaties to respect our privacy, too, fell on deaf ears.Since being posted on September 25, the video views have skyrocketed with the clip receiving over 60 million views and five million likes. As users focused their collective magnifying glass on Lauren, my friends, and me-comparing their sleuthing to “watching a soap opera and knowing who the bad guy is”-it felt like the entertainment value of the meme began to overshadow our humanity. When they appear on your For You page, I implore you to remember that they are people, not mysteries for you to solve. Given the apparent tendency of the TikTok algorithm to present viral spectacles to a user base increasingly hungry for content to analyze forensically, there will inevitably be more Couch Guys or Praters in the future. What I Regret About My Time as a Fitness Instructor Silicon Valley’s Oracles Are Reviving a False Prophecy The Great Alcohol Health Flip-Flop Isn’t That Hard to Understand-if You Know Who Was Behind ItĮlon Musk’s Weekend-Long Master Class in Business Failure One expert aptly summed up the Prater saga to Rolling Stone: “It was like watching true crime, internet sleuthing, conspiracy theories, and transphobia collide in a car crash.” This incident reveals the harmful potential of TikTok sleuthing. As Prater’s video climbed to 22 million views and internet sleuths came together to form a r/WhosSabrinaPrater community on Reddit, Prater faced baseless murder accusations, transphobic comparisons to Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, and overzealous vigilantes who threatened to go to her neighborhood to investigate further. The video’s virality began with parody videos, but quickly veered into the realm of conspiracy theory due to (you guessed it) the video’s apparent “bad vibes”-at which point I got a dreadful sense of déjà vu. The most recent target of the app’s emerging investigative spirit was Sabrina Prater, a 34-year-old contractor and trans woman, who went viral in November after posting a video of herself dancing in a basement midrenovation. In an article about the “frenzy … frantically trying to determine the identity” of the “mystery man” behind the meme, the Post asked, “Will the real ‘couch guy’ please stand up?” Meanwhile, as internet sleuths took to public online forums to sniff out my name, birthdate, and place of residence, the threat of doxxing loomed over my head.
The New York Post reported on, and perhaps encouraged, such invasions of my privacy. Under another video, in which hall mates of mine promised to confront Couch Guy once they reached 1 million likes (they didn’t), a comment suggested that they “secretly see who’s coming and going from his place”-and received 17,800 approving likes.
(I did not respond.) One viewer gleefully commented, “Even if this guy turned off his phone, he can’t escape the couch guy notifications,” a fact that the 37,600 users who liked it presumably celebrated too. At times, the investigation even transcended the digital world-for instance, when a resident in my apartment building posted a TikTok video, which accumulated 2.3 million views, of himself slipping a note under my door to request an interview.
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