About

POV Boyfriend refers to a series of TikTok videos that provide the viewer with the perspective of being the significant other of the person in the video. Categorized under the hashtag #POVboyfriend on the platform, the memes usually include the text "POV: I'm your boyfriend" and became popular in mid-2019.

Origin

The first example of a TikTok Boyfriend is unknown. On May 5th, 2019, TikToker thecristianguzma uploaded the earliest known example of the video which features the caption, "POV: you wake up to your boyfriend trying to blind himself after taking a nap on his bunk" (shown below). The video gained over 4,320 likes in a year.

Precursor

On July 6th, 2018, YouTuber DennisASMR uploaded an ASMR "Jealous Boyfriend Roleplay" video that received over 2.2 million views in two years (shown below).

On May 2nd, 2019, Twitter user @izzysmh posted a video "POV: you’ve been feeling insecure and your boyfriend sends you this reassuring video" adding My video for Briona that accrued over 213,000 views, 1,500 retweets and 5,600 likes in ta year (shown below).

POV: you’ve been feeling insecure and your boyfriend sends you this reassuring video pic.twitter.com/zqvxEDOeMi

— mars (@izzysmh) May 2, 2019

Spread

On May 24th, 2019, TikToker imwilliamdolan uploaded a video with the caption, "POV: your French boyfriend is teaching you some sentences" (shown below left). The video garnered over 62,200 likes in a year. On October 25th, TikToker kiocyrrr posted another example with the caption, "POV: you’re my gf and you’re accusing me of cheating on you" which received over 274,800 likes in seven months (shown below, center). On November 28th, NewStatesman^[1] published the article "The unstoppable rise of boyfriend point-of-view TikToks." On March 29th, 2020, TikToker najya87 garnered over 540,300 likes for his POV Boyfriend video (shown below, right). In 2020, StayHipp^[3] and ABC News^[2] also published articles on the trend.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References