Rom-coms like to frame it as one person being madly in love and the other just not realizing they're in love yet. It's determination, it's devotion, it's "true love" and so romantic!
Nah, it's totally disregarding your boundaries and your autonomy and collectively can we just ... ya know ... NOT?
Hanging around waiting for someone to be emotionally compromised so you can swoop in and "save the day" with your love is predatory.
"Wearing them down" until they say yes to a date is predatory.
Sabotaging their friendships and other relationships in the hopes that they'll "fall back" to you is predatory.
Not romance. Raptors. Now cut it out!
Reddit user MysteryScallop asked:
"What do people need to stop romanticizing?"
And hey, would you look at the very first response, it's our good friend Rom-coms!
But they're not alone here. This list is full of messiness, take a look.
Rom-Coms Need To Be Stopped
Bbc Starz GIF by Dublin MurdersGiphy"People dropping all their own goals and interests for someone else. Yes, the plot of standard rom-com."
- Mattie725
"Which brings us to stalking. Also romanticised in rom-coms."
- CozyCauldron
"This!"
"It's scary how people in these threads I see are sometimes just like 'no this is so romantic' and 'oh look at their relationship progressing' while I'm like 'no wtf?! this is the behavior of a crazy person that I wouldn't want anything to do with in real life ever!' "
"Doesn't just go for stalking, goes for a lot of things really. Rom-coms/dramas etc are good at romanticizing these really weird and super unhealthy things."
- thanhpi
"Do you know the series 'You' on Netflix?"
"The protagonist believes he is the hero of a romance. Just watch the trailer, I love it. It's relevant."
- koi88
Manic Pixie Superpowers?
Sarcastic Rose Byrne GIF by Apple TVGiphy"Mental illness is a serious condition. Having one does not make you cool, unique, or insightful. It's a disaster."
- Pretend_Drink5816
"The people who call ADHD a 'superpower' are just flat out wrong. ADHD is super debilitating overall."
"While there are some things we can do 'better' than people who are neurotypical, overall ADHD is extremely hard to manage and often can destroy a person's home life, school and/or career."
"Things aren't structured for us. At all. It's really hard to function."
- deja_geek
"Some individuals go as far as fetishsizing people with mental illness and its disgusting. That Manic Pixie Dream Girl is suffering."
- [Reddit]
"Some people called my autism a 'superpower' because smart or rich people also have autism and are really successful (Elon musk, Bill gates etc).but their superpower isn't autism, it's being a rich white guy."
"People don't seem to realize what Savant Syndrome is or what privilege is and just believe everyone with a mental illness or disability is some secret untapped genius, which is not the case."
"I don't have a 'superpower' and am not incredibly smart, what is different is my breakdowns which aren't fun believe it or not."
- Yuri-Bad
Followers
Social Media Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Having Followers."
- gor8884
"I had an acquaintance tell me that he really liked this guy he had gone on a few dates with, but the the guy had less than 1000 Instagram followers, and he saw that as a red flag."
"We were probably 19/20 at the time, in college. This guy was obsessed with social media appearances. He would only post photos of himself with people who he deemed attractive enough."
"Once my roommate, her other friend, him & I all went out. He knew my roommates friend on the same level as me, just acquaintances. No real connection."
"The friend is super pretty; she looks similar to Shay Mitchell."
"He asked to take a photo with her so he could post it on Instagram and didn’t even ask my roommate who he is ACTUALLY friends with or I to get in it LOL."
"HE was definitely the red flag in that relationship."
- rahws
"Real" Fathers
darth vader father GIF by Star WarsGiphy"My wife's ex-husband has documented schizophrenia, bi-polar and is a drug addict with a severe alcohol problem. He's also assaulted multiple people and posted pictures/bragged about nearly beating an old man to death at a gas station because he 'talked to his woman.' "
"People liked to romanticize him as just 'protective father.' "
"We lived in absolute fear anytime he got to see the kids. Would they come back with bruises, night-terrors, talking about strange people and places?"
"Or the week-long headaches with their clothes smelling of marijuana and having strange stains on them. What would go wrong this time? Or...would we even see them again?"
"Would he fly off the handle this time and beat or abandon them? Would he do what he's threatened and leave the state?"
"It's absolutely terrifying. The late night/early morning messages that didn't make sense, had him half-naked outside doing God only knows. The video chats of him being drunk or high."
"It took years to get him cut off completely, all due to the f*cking lie that 'children need their "REAL" father.'
F*ck. That. Shit. Sideways."
"No, they don't. Especially not if he's a dangerous maniac and they have a Father (ME) and only wants to love and protect them."
"He wasn't 'protective, he was violent. It cost nearly $10k and took ~5 years but he's finally been cut off."
"It only happened when he tried to break in, armed with a gun, drunk at 3am. He was caught a block away waiting for us to come out."
"Why? To be a real father and 'check on his children... with a loaded gun. The letter he wrote that they confiscated off of him that night really told what he wanted to do."
"We've since moved, and it's taken over a year of no contact for us to finally not be looking over our shoulder every second. Mental illness is awful and the man truly needs to be locked up, away from the general population with long-term care."
- importvita
Caught Up In The Game
ice cube film GIFGiphy"The 'gangsta' lifestyle and all that it entails."
"I grew up in Oakland and have witnessed far too many of the people I grew with get caught up in the game. Roughly half of the guys from my former neighborhood are either serving life sentences or were killed."
"I grew up in the 80s, but it's even worse now."
- frog_without_a_cause
"We've been glorifying lawless rebels who make their fortune through strength, cunning, and weapons since the start of time."
"Gangsters are just the modern version of outlaws, bandits, pirates, treasure hunters, and explorers. They answer to no one, they don't take any crap, you don't want to cross them, and the ones we idolize (whether real or fiction) are the ones that do that and succeed."
"We overlook the many, many examples of it being awful and focus on the few that show it being way better than our sh*tty boring, repetitive lives where we lack so much freedom."
- BillyPotion
Seriously Serial
This Is Weird GIF by Catfish MTVGiphy"Serial killers."
- TheSmegmatician
"And putting details of what they did all over the media, giving them additional fame. A comic I can't recall the name of said 'I know more about Ted Bundy than I know about my family.' "
- tactfulvulture
"Ted Bundy legit got hundreds of love letters from women in jail. Really strange why women would find a person who specifically murders only women attractive."
"Humans are certainly bizzarre."
- Noob_master_slayer
"Last podcast on the left does a really good job of showing how these guys are actually just massive losers that turn to killing because it’s the easiest way they can be good at something."
- nurplethepurple
"You can't possibly be a "fan" of any serial killers they talk about, because they make it very clear what pathetic and horrible people they all were."
"I absolutely loved their Charles Manson episodes. 99% of Manson-related media makes him out to be some criminal psychopath mastermind."
"LPOTL makes him out to be a horny little conman troll who had no f*cking clue what he was doing and made a bunch of choices out of sheer panic or stupidity. There's no glamour there."
- GaimanitePkat
It's Just A Job
Tired Presidential Debate GIF by INTO ACTIONGiphy"Overworking."
"My coworkers tend to make it a competition to see who can make the most sacrifices for their career. Who puts in the most overtime hours? Who does things off the clock for work more? Etc"
"It's bullsh*t. I have a life and a family I want to prioritize."
- Disastrous_Emu_3911
"Saying that you work a lot isn't the flex most people think it is. Unless you're rich or you work for yourself, you're basically admitting that you're sacrificing your life for someone else's gain."
- haloarh
"I can see when everyone on my team logs in and out."
"It's super common for people to start working at 4-5am and stay on until 10-11pm. I see work getting submitted at 2am. I see people logging on during weekends."
"One person even worked on Thanksgiving."
"It's like they don't know how to occupy themselves if they're not doing their job."
- Firate
Hot People Can Be Evil
bella swan twilight GIFGiphy"Attractive people doing harmful things."
"People shouldn't get a pass to do toxic and rude things simply because they're attractive. Why do I see serial killers and toxic partners get romanticized simply because they're hot?"
"Why does that make their horrible actions somehow badass and charismatic??"
- Basic_Material
"Back when the Boston marathon bombing happened one of my friends on Facebook started posting a bunch of pictures of one of the bombers, talking about how she would have dreams about him and how obsessed she was with him."
"I straight up blocked her after the second or third time because I couldn't get over how messed up that was. Dude killed and maimed multiple people, his objective attractiveness became absolutely null at that point."
- WhoIs_DankeyKang
"Ugh Twilight absolutely romanticizes this!"
"It's NOT ROMANTIC that a guy breaks into your bedroom at night and watches you sleep. It's not suddenly less terrifying because he is hot."
- Trueloveis4u
Yandere
mirai nikki gasai yuno GIFGiphy"In the anime community, can we please stop with the premise of a 'Yandere,' where someone is so obsessed with someone that they'd go out of their way to hurt other people that person falls in love with."
"I once had a girlfriend in college tell me entirely seriously that she had killed someone before and would physically harm the person I went out with if I ever went out with someone else."
"It was terrifying. It led to me having a fight with another close friend before finally mustering the courage to break off the relationship."
"She's been out of my life for three years but she still causes me issues with relationships to this day (for a few other reasons as well)."
"Not once did I think it was hot to have her earnestly threaten someone else. F*ck that."
- AverageMormonGamer
It's Not Organization
Sobbing Jamie Lee Curtis GIF by filmeditorGiphy"OCD."
"It’s not quirky or funny when I’m late for work because I had to back upstairs to check that the gas stove is off for the fifteenth time because I can’t stop envisioning the whole building blowing up."
"I literally stand frozen to the spot trying to fight the urge to go back when I KNOW I CHECKED but the intrusive thoughts are too upsetting to deal with."
"OCD isn’t being cute and quirky organized."
"For me its believing that people will die if I don’t check again. Again. No again."
"Even if it hurts me. Again."
"I watched a TV series called Whitechapel where the main detective has OCD. There’s a scene of him flicking his office light switch off and on repeatedly whilst screaming his head off desperately wanting to stop."
"That is exactly what it feels like for me."
- UnspeakablePlants
"Howie Mandel talked about this on Conan's podcast the other week."
"As an example, he said he'd miss business meetings getting stuck in a loop of checking that the front door was locked for hours."
- ispysomethingorange8
What does it say about us as people that almost all of these were related to the ways we glamorize our own destruction?
I know I came hard for rom-coms at the beginning, but let's be honest this list is kind of disturbing. What's more, I'm sure you all have things you could add here.
So let's talk about them. What dangerously romanticized thing would you add to the list?
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Young people, please understand it is all lies. Your twenties are probably going to be a raging dumpster fire where you have no idea WTF you're actually supposed to be doing, but you're pretty sure you're doing it wrong.
One Reddit user asked:
What is something that people should stop romanticizing?
You know my answer. Check out what these people had to say.
Sacrificing For Your Job
i feel sick sigh GIFGiphyBeing willing (or forced) to sacrifice your own health for your job.
So many times I've listened to people get into bragging competitions about who has been the sickest and still gone to work. F*ck that noise, if I'm sick I'm keeping my @ss at home!
If there's one thing I hope COVID is able to permanently put to rest, it's the idea that going to work sick is in any way acceptable.
Employers are 100% on the hook for this.
F*ck off with your "lean staffing" plans (read: deliberate, chronic understaffing) and offer sick pay to your employees so that they don't feel like they have to come in and infect the rest of the staff when they're sick.
- lachwen
Trauma Is Not Trendy
I've joined some groups for bpd support and stuff and been dismayed to find they're filled with teens who have just post cringy memes and talk like anime characters.
There are even trendy words. I tried to explain to someone a couple years ago about how I got too high and started dissociating (like actually felt like I was a robot and out of my own body. Absolutely terrifying) and I didn't realize that "dissociation" has become a trendy buzzword to mean.... I don't even know what, but they were like, "Ah, yes." like they understood exactly what I meant.
Romanticizing trauma, basically. Dissociation can be super scary.
I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and the number of people I've seen online that basically appear to want this disorder is appalling.
I'm in a good place now and love my alters, but for a while there I was hospitalized with sky high anxiety and all I did for 12 (sometimes 24) hours a day when I was finally home was try to manage my emotions while switching from alter to alter.
I spent all day every day not knowing if the horrible memory I just got in a flashback is real and I've forgotten it or not. It's not fun being like that at all.
He's Abusive
Joker and Harley Quinn's relationship.
He's abusive, people.
As someone who has been in an abusive relationship and can also kind of understand romanticizing theirs, it's complicated. I think that maybe a lot of women like me have been in similar simulations and can find comfort in knowing they're not alone.
None of this is an endorsement, by the way, but I do get it.
Main issue with this one is that I'm willing to bet that nearly all of the Joker/Harley lovers have only gotten their view of them via the Suicide Squad & Birds of Prey movies.
There was no abuse shown in those movies (it was kind of implied in BoP, I guess) and that is why the emancipation part of BoP fell flat for me. We never really saw the abusive relationship or the truly messed up stuff that I have heard of from the comics.
It's Harder And Kind Of Sucks
Disability. It hasn't given me "a whole new and different and unique and special perspective on things."
I just can't see as well, it makes life harder, and it kind of sucks.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Thank you!!
Honestly, I'm so over this "you can do anything you set your mind to!"
No I can't. I'm disabled.
It's hard for my to do a lot of stuff. And that's ok. Some times it gets me down and that's ok too. I don't have to be the embodiment of positivity because I'm disabled.
Yesss! Visually impaired and chronically ill here.
It's totally fine to be happy for someone's accomplishments, but the inspiration porn needs to stop ASAP. So done with that sh*t.
And the idea that you can do anything if you just work hard? Well 1, no. I can't do anything.
But more importantly 2, I shouldn't have to work 10x harder to barely meet your standards and then get told that my disabled peers are doing way better than me. That's ableist, not inspiring.
And it's also what got me kicked out of college cause it was so inaccessible.
Just Normal
Gay people.
For pete's sake we're not unicorns. We're not inherently cuter or more inspirational or whatever people like to say about us.
If you wouldn't fawn over me if I were with a guy, don't start melting into a puddle because I'm with a girl.
I appreciate that American society (or at least where I live) has gone from borderline legal to murder me to treating me like I'm a special, I really do.
But more than anything I just want to be left alone.
- BW_Bird
You want to be - hold the phone - treated as an equal to any other "normal" person.
Crazy, right?
Hustle Culture
People need to stop romanticizing "Hustle Culture". People need to understand that overworking does not lead to being overpaid. You are just going to end up being overworked and burnt out.
Just be consistent in whatever you do.
It's like an even more twisted version of the Protestant work ethic.
Instead of suffering hard work in this life to get into heaven, you're suffering hard work just to maybe, if you're really lucky, afford to live in a house like the one you grew up in rather than a rabbit hutch in the stabby part of town.
Young Love
leonardo dicaprio love GIFGiphyYoung love.
Your first relationship most likely won't last. It'll hurt when it does end, but it's not the end of the world.
Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy, not a romance. The story is about two young people (Juliet is 13) who over the course of 4 days have a forbidden love and then commit suicide.
- dring157
Cultural products like music and movies especially f*ck up kids who are dealing with raging hormones and insecurity.
The idea that you are supposed to find TRUE ETERNAL LOVE with another confused kid puts on so much more and unrealistic expectations.
The Feel-Good Nature Of Bad
Cheating and other "forbidden fun," with relationships. So many songs nowadays embracing the feel-good nature of a bad decision.
Cheating. In the media it is shown as a love story, nobody shows the suffering that the betrayed person suffers, the pain, all the trauma. These people are always abusive, ugly, unsuccessful, all as a way to "justify" adultery!
Post Bottoming Out
I am bothered by the romanticized view of the post-bottoming out rehab process. Movies love showing people sitting in circles telling horrible stories. In real life these are stories about how you hurt yourself and loved ones very deeply.
Fix You First
Stop romanticizing getting pets, having kids, or getting married when you're unfit for that.
People need to address their own sh*t before they add another living being (partner, child, animal) to the mix.
People either don't give it much thought and think that's what they have to do. Or they think adding one of those things to their lives will fix whatever issue(s) they have going on.
Also, people that don't have children sometimes are called "selfish."
I think people (especially people with serious problems that are not being addressed) that have children are just as, if not more, selfish than children-less adults. These people think the world needs another one of them running around or they are using this human or animal to serve some purpose for their lives.
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