TikTok filters have introduced unprecedented opportunities for pranks.
A recent video posted by Sophie and Jacob (@sophienotjacob) has proved this by going viral over her boyfriend’s reaction to a “bug” filter on TikTok. The video shows Sophie filming Jacob as virtual cockroaches appear on his face. Since the video was posted, it has received over 3 million views and more than 196,000 likes.
“Putting the bug filter on my boyfriend to see how he reacts,” Sophie captioned the video, which shows her boyfriend flinching in panic, trying to get the virtual cockroaches off of his face.
A couple take a video for social media on a smartphone. A clip on TikTok has gone viral after a woman tried out a “bug” filter on her boyfriend, to his hilarious response.
ChayTee/Getty Images
Sophie cracked up laughing in the video—and so did commenters. Viewers in the comments could not get enough of the hilarity, with many saying they had watched the video a countless number of times.
“I’ve watched this more times than I should have,” @sarah.patricia10 wrote.
“Give this man an Oscar,” @fodda90 wrote.
“We may not know how you met, but we know how it ended,” @deborah.athena quipped.
Sophie and Jacob often post content similar to the prank—in fact, in a recent video, Jacob gets back at Sophie with his own “bug filter” surprise. Similarly, Sophie swats at her face disgusted while Jacob laughs.
The couple have become popular for their antics. Jacob has even created a successful series on their profile that he calls: “When my love language is to annoy my girlfriend.” In the series, Jacob reveals himself doing things like throwing Sophie’s clothes across the room, tapping her on the head and face and taking her phone away.
“Enough of that,” she says to him in one video.
“Not this annoying mood again,” she says in another. “Peace, I want peace.”
Pranks on social media
Sophie and Jacob are hardly the first TikTok couple creating “prank” content for their social media accounts—and a 2019 study published in the Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies revealed some of the reasons this is the case.
The authors argue that interpersonal pranks now constitute a large portion of the social media landscape—and the main intention is to get views and likes. But other factors, like age, gender, and, surprisingly, partners’ self-esteem, have an impact on content creation.
They found that the “higher the self-esteem of the partners is, the lesser their desire to engage in social media pranks.” They also concluded that pranks decrease satisfaction between partners in a relationship.
Sophie and Jacob have built a name for themselves by pranking each other and tolerating each other’s jokes. Despite the study’s warning, this couple certainly appear happy and united in their content plans.
Newsweek reached out to @sophienotjacob for comment via TikTok.
