Hey, you know Tom Holland and Nicki Minaj, right? Two very famous people in their respective fields who basically have no prior connection to each other? Well, TikTok is mourning their fake meme relationship, and it’s a time for the culture.
In case you weren’t already aware, pictures surfaced across the weekend of Tom and his Spider-Man co-star Zendaya enjoying some private time together, as is their right as two mutually very hot celebrities who are so overwhelmingly attractive it is a bit scary.
While rumblings about the nature of their relationship ignited certain fandoms across the internet, it also brought the focus back into a completely made-up joke that Tom is actually in a relationship with Nicki Minaj. Why? Um, just because.
In 2019 a Nicki stan account blew up with a tweet doctoring a conversation between the actor and the rap superstar, and ever since it’s become part of the fandom’s online lexicon and expanded into what basically amounts to online fanfic about the two of them now being married with children.
Has Tom even met Nicki? Does he know all the words to her Monster verse? Did he purchase a copy of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded back in the day? We may never know.
But obviously, this fantasy version of reality has now been disrupted in real-time and people are doing what they do best and now making viral memes out of an already viral meme. The world keeps on turning, the snake eats its own tail, etc etc.
The trend has especially taken off on TikTok, where users are pretty much gleefully ripping into the situation like Tom and Nicki are the Brangelina of the social media age.
A particularly prescient TikTok user wrote “I can’t believe [Tom] cheated on [Nicki] with Zendaya,” while lip-syncing to Olivia Rodrigo’s Traitor. As Nicki’s fabled lyricism kind of goes: but I gotta keep an eye out for Zendaya. Should have seen that one coming, barb!
Basically, in a digital age where so much of culture is absorbed and subsumed into formats with the distinct intention of either taking the piss out of something or twisting an image so far from its original truth that it no longer holds any resemblance to the original, what is dead may never die and the same goes for memes.
So RIP to Tom Holland and Nicki Minaj, truly a fake couple for (and made by) the social media age. You will be missed.