Humor, Critique, and Companionship: Audience Reception of an Unconventional Tiktok Marriage Proposal on Youtube

This study investigated audience reception of a reposted TikTok video on YouTube featuring an unconventional marriage proposal between two straight men. Using a qualitative design that combined thematic analysis and content analysis, 125 out of 260 comments from 191 unique users were examined to capture tones, recurring themes, and cultural framings. The findings revealed that humor was the dominant mode of engagement, allowing audiences to negotiate discomfort while collectively reimagining marriage and companionship. Substantive themes included financial and practical benefits, critiques of women and traditional marriage, companionship and stability, admiration and praise, and skepticism or dismissal. Analysis further demonstrated how the YouTube comment section functioned as a digital public sphere where diverse cultural, moral, and ethical arguments were voiced. Anchored on theories of the public sphere, audience reception, and mediated intimacy, the study concludes that digital publics actively reinterpret media texts as opportunities to critique existing norms, experiment with alternative relational scripts, and deliberate on the human condition in the Internet age.