If they wanted to, they would
Well, well, well. Apparently stupid stunts still get media coverage.
The bar has certainly risen. Floating something on Sydney Harbour or building something on Bondi Beach will generally engender a shrug, if you’re lucky. Climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, on the other hand…
This week, two people scaled the famous New York landmark to unfurl a banner that read “When the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace”. It’s unclear which brand they were shilling.
Instead, the daredevils, Angela Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov, appeared to get engaged on the platform overlooking the city, before returning to ground level and promptly being arrested and charged with various felonies. Ah, the romance.
The response across social media platforms was inevitable. “Give me this, or nothing” (for that user, nothing is looking pretty likely). “If he wanted to, he would” (plummet to his demise presumably being the end of that sentence).
These kinds of reactions are predictable because they’re the taglines added to every example of exaggerated romance going.
In a world of performative content, it’s not surprising. Nor is it contained to social media platforms. Research from Ampere Analysis found that 83% of romance commissions on streaming platforms in 2026 were scripted. This is a massive shift from as recently as the second half of 2022, when there was an almost equal split between reality and scripted romance shows.
In dating, reality is seemingly no longer enough. While we’ve always swooned over the perfect romances in fiction, they were largely acknowledged as just that - an idealised, unrealistic portrayal of life. Now, they’re increasingly held up as the minimum viable dating product. No wonder everyone’s lonely.
This is not to encourage lower expectations. After all, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ is still being written about, and that came out so long ago the film could legally access social media in Australia.
But perhaps we can acknowledge that spending the night of your engagement in prison is not the pinnacle of modern romance. Plus, imagine your nails after that climb. Not great for the ring content.