Tiktok trend: Good night, my love

A father who looks like what you'd imagine a father to look like in a sitcom is lying flat on the couch. His receding hairline is visible, his beard and hair are graying, and he's holding his cell phone at the somewhat awkward, but typical parental arm's length distance—perhaps it's presbyopia.

He's on the phone; it appears to be his daughter's boyfriend. And, according to the caption in the video currently making the rounds online, he actually only has one task. He's supposed to say "good night" to the guy on the other end of the phone. Only, he can't manage it. He can't stop laughing, constantly, and can't contain himself or even form a coherent sentence.

As a viewer, you have to laugh along. Inevitably. The poor boyfriend you call has to laugh, a little tormented. And that probably fits the boyfriend. Girlfriend, who captures all this in a TikTok-worthy vertical video, also has to laugh behind the camera. The dog, who appears at the edge of the frame, doesn't have to laugh, but seems irritated.

Videos like this are currently flooding TikTok and Instagram feeds. Men trying to say "goodnight" to other men on the phone, but can't help but fail. Fathers failing with their sons or sons-in-law. Men failing with their friends. Bros failing with bros.

Of course, it's incredibly funny: grown men who can't even manage to say two simple words. And of course, the entire situation is contrived. Practically no one calls these days just to say "good night." You'd have to be madly in love with each other or really good friends. Generally speaking, no one calls anymore: people chat, text, and write Teams messages in the office. Anyone who calls is either an anachronist or in an emergency.

If the father, who laughs himself to the point of exhaustion in the video, had simply written "Goodnight" after a conversation, a text message, a WhatsApp message, or an Instagram DM, everything would have been normal. No questions, nothing. But he didn't. So the poor boyfriend is expecting something important, perhaps even terrible. A catastrophe that doesn't even exist.

For the father—and his filming daughter—it's funny from the start. For the person being called, it only becomes funny once they figure out what's going on. As a viewer, you immediately guess what's going on, feel like you're in on it, and can giggle to your heart's content. Heehee.

Upon closer inspection, however, there's something else lurking in these videos. If you're completely honest with yourself, you have to admit: people are also laughing at the tragedy.

Modern feminism has successfully woven some of its tenets into the mainstream in recent years—nonsense: decades. Fortunately, of course. However, many recipients—emphasis on the "er"—have struggled with one very specific tenet in the past: that feminism also means liberating men from traditional gender roles. That men, too, can be emotional, caring, and simply nice to one another.

If you're wondering what modern feminism is doing in a text about funny videos of laughing men , let me tell you: It's usually men who tell their sons, "A man doesn't cry, be strong," or "Don't be a wimp." It's usually men who punish any sign of weakness or affection among their friends with a stupid comment.

And it's usually men who say that women are always on the phone about everything and nothing, and how annoying that is, typically female. Not all men, of course, but still plenty. The author of this text has also done and said such things before, and it was just stupid.

So when men fail to talk to other men on the phone about trivial things; when they fail to simply say "good night," that's great comedy. But it's almost certainly also an indication that men are perhaps not as free and independent of expectations as they might like to be. If you turn the sound off in the videos, it's often impossible to tell whether the men on the phone are laughing or crying. Perhaps both are true at once: The man is crying because he's imprisoned in his manhood. But crying isn't an option. So he laughs.

On the progressive side of the discourse, there are entire podcasts about how men are now really allowed, able, and supposed to cry. But when it gets concrete and a man is suddenly supposed to call someone else to exchange affection, it's not meant seriously; it's a setup. It remains strange, awkward, and funny. A taboo, but definitely also content. Even if it's just about something banal like, "Good night."