Most women today share something in common: They all have at least one messed-up story about a man they’ve dated. Don’t believe me? This TikTok trend should be all the proof you need.
Women have been posting videos on the app sharing some pretty terrible moments they’ve had with toxic men, overlaying their posts to Lorde’s single “Man Of The Year,” which was released at the end of last month. These women are specifically using the part of the song where Lorde sings, “Let’s hear it for the man of the year,” and while out of context that probably sounds like it carries a positive connotation, it’s used completely sarcastically here, if that isn’t obvious. Or maybe it’s just meant to imply these are the shittiest men of the year.
Realistically, these women all deserve “Woman of the Year” for some of the crap they had to encounter. One that actually made my jaw drop was this video, where the user shared that her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her took a voicemail she left him while crying and made it into an EDM beat.
A lot of the women posting during this trend have come around to being able to laugh about it — to some extent, I’m sure — gaining a sense of humor about their situations with the help of time and distance from them. The user herself liked several comments that made me actually laugh out loud, like “it’s lowk hard asf i’m bumpin,” “I’m sorry this is HILARIOUS” and “I GASPED. at least this is iconic and u have ur own song…”
Granted, I genuinely couldn’t imagine the fury I’d feel had that been the response I was sent in that moment. And while we can acknowledge the humor, it’s worth mentioning that some of these stories are pretty harrowing and abusive, and they’re real situations that real people are experiencing — like this woman, who shared her story about getting pregnant by a man who left her at a young age.
Another user shared an absolutely embarrassing moment for her ex in the form of this voicemail he left her after she found out he cheated on her. One of the top comments on this one is “why is it crying.”
This guy said his cheating was actually a failed loyalty test experiment, to which one commenter said, “He isn’t gaslighting you he owns the gas company.”
Or there’s this guy, who really, really wanted to emphasize that he didn’t cheat.
This woman posted her video with the caption “guys this is funny. no seriously laugh.” It’s a voicemail her ex-boyfriend left her singing “Love Is Gone” by Dylan Matthew and SLANDER. Yikes! A tough watch that I can’t seem to stop laughing at.
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What does this even mean? We break it down.The trend has been so popular that even Lorde herself posted about it. “Man Of The Year” is actually about gender expression, so its meaning is quite unrelated to the trend, but Lorde still gets it.
The song has currently been used in almost 183,000 posts on TikTok and is ranked in the top spot on TikTok’s viral music charts — and this is all happening before Virgin, the album on which “Man Of The Year” appears, has even been released.
Men have also been putting their own spin on the trend by partaking in “Woman Of The Year,” sharing similar instances that they’ve experienced with female partners. It does also seem that some of these videos that women posted have been pretty perspective-changing for some men on TikTok.
Some of the posts are getting millions of likes, and between this and the plethora of comments left on the videos, it’s clear that women are not alone in these experiences. Six in 10 women say that cheating is extremely common in relationships, according to the Survey Center on American Life, and about 58% of women have been cheated on by a partner before. But “cheating” can take many different forms in today’s age. Social media and dating apps have expanded the ways people can discreetly have conversations that can cause emotional damage in a relationship. The same survey also stated that one in 10 married Americans under 40 years old are still on dating apps.
This is also not even to mention the other kinds of harmful encounters experienced in relationships: one out of four women in a relationship will experience physical abuse, according to the National Library of Medicine. Almost half of all women experience psychological aggression by a partner at some point too.
It isn’t surprising, then, to see this trend take place. TikTok has become a common place for women to share their exhaustion with men. There was the “women in male-dominated fields” trend, where women shared shitty things men in their career fields have said to them. There was the “choosing the bear” trend, where women shared that they’d rather encounter a bear while lost in the woods than a man. The statistics are there to affirm this: More women are single — specifically, choosing to be single — than they ever have been before, citing gender gaps and demographic shifts in economics, political views, education and family values as the main factor.
Ultimately, there’s a lot of frustration and concern that women are feeling right now, so it’s been quite beautiful — and pretty funny — seeing women come together over their shared traumas. What more is there to life than bonding with your sisterhood, especially when it comes to sharing such catastrophic relationship moments with one another?
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