There is little certainty in this world: death, taxes, and the compulsion of a Taylor Swift fan to search for clues in everything. A recent addition to the list is the undying love of TikTok Ordinary peopleConnell (Paul Mescal) and Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones). It’s officially been three years since I first laid eyes on the beautiful yet tormented couple, and they’ve haunted me and the For You page ever since.
Ordinary peopleadapted from Sally Rooney’s second novelAnd Follows Connell and Marian’s volatile relationship from their intense start in high school to their tumultuous reunion at university. Over the course of 12 episodes, viewers watched the Irish teens mature Distressed youth, while facing challenges related to mental health, family, and feelings of belonging.
Kendall Roy is the baby of the internet
If not beautifully edited to a touching song by the likes of Taylor Swift Or Phoebe Bridgers (who was, in particular, the former Mescal), sexy scenes – and there are many – posted on Tik Tok Raw, not properly formatted just a phone recording a greasy laptop screen. However, thousands of likes and views pour in.
The fanfare does not end with the television From the adaptation, Rooney’s novel gets almost equal airtime. I’ve seen the quote, “I’m not a religious person, but I sometimes believe God created you for me,” more than I think.
On TikTok, the hashtag “Normal People” currently has 7 billion views. It’s not a series that will ever get a second season, and the latest adaptation of Rooney’s first novel, Conversations with friendslack Ordinary peoplecultural impact. So why won’t TikTok let Connell and Marian go?
“It’s a show I still think about a lot. The show and the book have really influenced the way I look at modern relationships,” Pete Ross, a 22-year-old UK publishing assistant, told Mashable. Ross started making Ordinary people After graduating from college in 2022, after two years of watching the program originally, to learn software editing.
for young people like Ross, Ordinary people It is a mirror through which they can see themselves more clearly. Elliott D’Silva, an English-language doctoral student at UC Berkeley, explored the program’s popularity Ordinary people In a course titled “Sally Rooney: Popularity and Popularity”. “Relatability is the thing that gets people hooked on Sally Rooney,” he says. “Her characters feel like they could be any young person today negotiating the same kind of challenges and changes as all of us.”
It helps that the actors who played those characters became stars in their own right. mescal performance in 2022 after the sun It earned him a Best Actor nomination academy awards, and his general relationship with the singer-songwriter Bridgers It led to a lot of speculation online. Since then Edgar Jones has starred in it Fresh And Where the Cordads sing And while she hasn’t found the same level of success as Mescal on screen, she’s still a darling among all Ordinary people fans. The pair hang out regularly, feeding fans more content that they can then use to make speculative edits on Connell and Marianne.
With the adaptations, fans regularly remix the show. For now, the 12 episodes are curled up by going back to favorite moments and re-contextualising them based on the songs the scenes are paired with. New music that has come out in the three years since makes the scenes feel fresh again. By associating new words with the characters, fans re-immerse themselves in the emotions of the show. For example, Taylor Swift released a 10-minute version of her hit song “All Too Well” a year and a half after her release. Ordinary people. Release(Opens in a new tab) stretch on complete The song now has over 1.9 million views on YouTube.
With the edits, you can relive the best scenes in the show, but with the saddest music and the most disturbing transitions. I can watch Ordinary people tweaks of Taylor Swift’s songs for actual hours, connecting the words to the scenes,” Konstantina, 24, a self-described medical lab assistant in Greece Ordinary people Free “addicted,” says Mashable.
“The songs will immediately remind me of Connell and Marianne, and then I plan an edit to go along with the lyrics,” Julie, a 20-year-old sophomore, tells Mashable. She didn’t see the show until last year and now she’s creating and publishing Ordinary people Modifications to TikTok. A video combining clips of Connell and Marianne with Bridgers’ “Waiting Room” has garnered over 803,000 views and 145,000 likes. Another group for “Those Eyes” from New West has received over 80,000 likes.
Ordinary people Modifications are included as part of “sad girl culture” A private corner of the internet where disaffected youth worship at Sally Rooney’s altar, FleabagAnd Bridgers, and Swift, and anyone whose art can effectively trigger a depressive episode. The entire universe is called Multiverse of grief(Opens in a new tab) Created by fans connecting to sad girl favorites, both Mescal and Edgar Jones are central characters — the pair even dressed up as Fleabag And the hot priest for Halloween. Communications with Paul Mescal, Phoebe Bridgers, Fleabag And Taylor Swift kept it up Ordinary people Famous, ”explains Konstantin.
A lot of Phoebe Bridgers’ music really suits her Ordinary people Because a lot of these songs are about growing up and Ordinary people “It’s about growing or falling in love and trying to figure out your place in the world,” says Ross. It’s a great looking display. The visuals can really be tweaked.”
Ordinary people It ends ambiguously as Connell and Marian continue their cycle of misunderstandings. It’s a conclusion that may leave viewers dissatisfied and the couple begging for a happy ending. “Ordinary people It wasn’t that many episodes, Julie explained, and she didn’t really understand what happens to her next, so the adaptations that continue Connell and Marianne’s story have a large fanbase. “”
It can also focus on fans in particular Ordinary people Because when it came out: a month into lockdown. in 2021, Atlantic Ocean(Opens in a new tab) A youth subculture dedicated to stirring up nostalgia for the early days of COVID-19 has been reported. I wrote about how to make a file Viral TikTok songs from Spring 2020 sparked strong emotional responses from usersAnd Perhaps the same can be said for the TV shows we indulged in during that time. Ordinary people It is a benchmark that people can refer to to rate how much they have changed over the past three years.
Just a month into the pandemic, it’s the building block of a new algorithm-generated persona, the sad girl online. There’s a strange comfort in watching it now – a mysterious end to a mysterious point in time, our FYPs forever dragging us back to Connell and Marianne.