Couple goals: Love in the age of Instagram

Editor’s note: Our lead essay by Mekhala Singhal looks at the ‘curation’ of romance, and how we now ‘perform’ love for an audience on platforms like Instagram. Are we less invested in our relationship than how it will appear on Instagram? Is the algorithm shaping our dating choices?

Written by: Mekhala Singhal

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There’s a small but popular creative agency in Canada called Arcade Studios, which, once a year, releases something called ‘scan club’. It’s a report that predicts digital and marketing trends for the coming year. For 2026, ‘romance’ makes the list as ‘moments designed for digital memory’. Notice how it specifically talks about digital memory, not just memory? Today, how love looks on camera matters more than what it feels like to you..

Take, for example, this Instagram trend where the “posture” of the man kneeling to propose is the “number one tip” for your “perfect proposal photo.” The trend kicked off when a woman Jordan Hardman shared this bit of wisdom:

Explaining, she says that when some men get down on their knees, they start to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Well, it turns out proper posture isn't a "niche" ick at all — it is pretty universal. 

This hypervigilance, focused on how one looks on camera (instead of on the meaning of the moment) turns a major life event into a curated, made-for-camera orchestration. Worse, it implies that the man must first master the perfect pose before he proposes—or run the risk of rejection. It’s not just about that photo or reel alone. This mindset now shapes how we pick prospective partners, lovers, friends, and even our own desires. It bleeds from our online persona into real life. We begin seeking out relationships that match what is acceptable online.  

In almost every aspect of our life experience—vacations, celebrations, dinners—we perform for the camera, managing every facet of our external selves to meet the dictatorial standards of Instagram. We must be shiny, polished and airbrushed at all times, free of any human dissonance. The messiness of human emotion is flattened, with an insistence on ‘marketing’ every part of life as a capital M moment. Romance is no different. 

Influencers manufacture and monetise the perfect-looking relationship (emphasis on ‘looking’). They deliberately pick and choose the most marketable parts of their personal relationships to share online. This headline—’Influencers turn India’s biggest wedding boom into a Rs 700-crore content carnival’—pretty much sums it up. Regular people are inevitably following suit, curating every part of their romantic lives to live up to an image in their head.

All this is framed by a careful mix of traditional and liberal signifiers, but is essentially regressive at heart. Hence, the obsession with the old-fashioned proposal—by a man to a woman, on bended knee. Then there are relationship “rules” that couples proudly share. The most alarming is the fetishisation of old-fashioned misogyny. Like this podcast reel where one of the hosts offers amusing ‘family’ stories of her grandfather who threw dishes on the floor if he was unhappy with the food on the table. This is a podcast hosted by women who call themselves feminist.  Romance on Instagram has become a cautionary tale about so-called choice feminism and who we consider feminists.

The worrying trend is about more than just a moment in a relationship—like the proposal. We now have our own version of tradwife content—fetishising sindoor and mangalsutras. This young woman wakes up at 5 am to cook for the family—and still has time for her beauty routine (product placements included). But all of them present themselves as modern Indian women. 

These videos are made with thought and intention to craft a highly marketable version of ‘womanhood’. By walking this careful, convenient line, these content creators are able to have it all. They get to retain their progressive, feminist viewers who want to support a woman’s self-expression. At the same time, they don’t alienate followers who embrace the traditional role of wife and mother. An extreme version is actually an NRI, Renuka Kandasamy, who goes by TamilMomBlogger. The Indian mother lives in Norway with her family, and posts about her seven (yes, seven!) children. Her content is not subtle and the effect is less insidious, but it effectively mainstreams Indian patriarchy.

By flattening human relationships into objects for display and consumption, we are forced to categorise ourselves and our partners. We end up adopting the same ideas about masculinity and femininity that we learnt to reject, except this time it’s supposedly harmless because it is cutesy or sweet. This kind of pastoral patriarchy—framed as perfection—leaves us yearning for the same, to the point where we’re ready to compromise on authenticity.

Take, for example, the ‘Golden Retriever Boyfriend’, who, according to this Cosmopolitan article, is “a stable, guileless, loyal, romantic partner who gives his love and devotion freely—if also blindly and arguably with little discernment.” Reflecting on the popularity of the term and the stereotype on TikTok, and on seeing Taylor Swift with her jock boyfriend, the writer says that she, too, has fallen for its appeal.

To a degree, sure, it’s harmless to daydream. But it’s valuable, perhaps now more than ever, to ask yourself who you are outside of the digital world, and find ways to fill your life with more than just online relationships.

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Mekhala Singhal is Assistant Editor at Advisory.