The “couch guy” video, a TikTok sensation a couple of years ago, has spurred a University of Illinois study of how viral videos affect us.

 

Emily Mendelson, a graduate student in communications, says the real story is not necessarily the video, but, rather, how people respond. 

 

“I saw a lot of derivatives of the video to make memes,” she said, “a lot of people analyzing the body language, a lot of people responding to it, and I thought this would be an interesting thing to write a paper about. Let me think about how I can connect this video to concepts in rhetoric and interpersonal communications and see what we have here.”

 

The video depicts a young woman surprising her boyfriend at college, and his reaction strikes some as underwhelming. The girlfriend – who posted the video – was upset when commenters told her to break up with the couch guy. But she got the last laugh in using her TikTok profile to sell “couch guy” T-shirts.

 

Mendelssohn’s paper: Sensemaking and public intimacy on TikTok: How viral videos influence interpersonal relationships offline – Emily A Mendelson, 2023 (sagepub.com)

The video: Couch Guy Original Tik Tok – YouTube