The “Hotline Bling” TikTok Trend Is Making Me Question My Favorite TV and Movie ‘Ships

I remember the first time I saw it. I was just scrolling through TikTok in my living room when all of a sudden a familiar beat that I hadn’t heard in years started playing from my phone and Connell and Marianne suddenly appeared on my screen. I seriously had no idea what year it was anymore. But I did end up gasping so loud because I could not believe the ick that I got over Connell after watching it.It was none other than a Hotline Bling edit for Normal People and that one video sparked an entire TikTok trend featuring various videos of different ships from so many of our favorite TV shows and movies. Some of them are couples that are still happily together after their finales and endings, and still I couldn’t help but feel so differently towards them after seeing the edits. Were these truly the couples that I was cheering on all these years ago? Or was Drake’s song—though an iconic track that I would love to listen to again at a house party—revealing something different about these couples?There were some very obvious ones. Like Gale and Katniss from The Hunger Games, which rightfully deserves an edit like this one. But then you set it to Seb and Mia’s tragic story from La La Land and all of a sudden I’m reliving the trauma all over again. Syd and Carmy from The Bear? They have one, despite some fans not wanting them to get together. The Severance love triangle hexagon has a genius one that is so multilayered thanks to the show’s complex storyline. Allie and Noah from The Notebook—AKA the story that made me believe in love? Oh, they’re included too! The ones that really hit though were Pride and Prejudice and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which I immediately sent to multiple group chats with shocked reactions.While the song is all about missing someone after they’re gone, it’s also hard to ignore some of the toxicity that has festered from it. Especially since the videos are typically being made from the male character’s POV, they make it seem like it’s the female character’s problem that all this negativity around the relationship is happening. However, it’s really not. They’re just mad that she can clearly live her best life without him.Which makes me question whether any of these relationships are actually healthy. Sure, in the grand scheme of it all, most of these couples in their canon are perfectly matched together and fall more in line with the feisty rivals-to-lovers trope or more of a place of forced yearning due to being separated by something in society. But, of course, Drake makes things even more complicated and now I’m left wondering if it’s just me or do I need to worry about another one of my favorite couples during my next doomscroll.