Celebrity couple obsessions have always been a thing. Whether it’s Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt on the cover of People Magazine (again) or a YouTube video entitled “Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds cute couple moments,” there’s always a popular celebrity couple to follow. 

The comments below social media posts about popular celebrity couples are always filled with thousands of heart-eyes, fans screaming in all-caps about how cute said celebrities are and people tagging their friends to send them the video of their favorite celebrity couple. 

As I see more and more of these posts, I feel like this celebrity couple obsession is getting out of hand. 

The escapism that a celebrity obsession provides is comforting for a lot of people. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that everyone has dreamed of being famous at one point in their life. I know I definitely have. Following famous people we identify with makes sense. 

The fixation on celebrity love lives, however, encourages a type of wishful thinking that is totally unrealistic. 

For example, Zendaya is a popular actress today and is currently in a relationship with Tom Holland. However, there are many people on the internet who are hoping for sparks between Zendaya and “Dune” co-star Timothée Chalamet. 

Chalamet and Zendaya are amongst the most loved celebrities on the internet right now. It doesn’t make sense for their own fans to make far-fetched and daydream-y comments about these two friends. 

When I looked under posts of Zendaya and Chalamet shown together, here are some of the comments I saw: 

“she needs to drop Tom and get w the real hero asap”

“Better ship than her and tom tbh”

“Now Tom and Zendaya are cute but this…..this is a power couple”

Zendaya and Chalamet have made it clear that they are just friends, which highlights just how far-fetched and weird the wishful thinking of these fans is. 

While some fans are mixing up fantasies of current celebrity friendships and couples, the same wishful thinking is applied to couples who have broken up. 

One such couple is Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. Stone and Garfield broke up in 2015, yet there are just as many posts about these two as there are about current couples today. This new obsession is a result of Garfield’s return to his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Marvel’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and video edits of the two are everywhere. 

People are still heartbroken over these two, even though it’s been seven years. 

Public relations (PR) companies have taken note of fan appetite for celeb romance and have harnessed it to encourage buzz for upcoming movies and TV shows. These PR couples are quite easy to spot. Some examples include Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart for “Twilight” and Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron for “High School Musical”. 

Taylor Swift and Harry Styles are two of the most popular musicians today, and their relationship from 2012 was obviously a PR stunt. “Haylor” lasted for about a month, and it was conveniently timed around One Direction’s release of their album “Take Me Home” and Swift’s “Red.” 

This relationship was short and quite obviously fake. But, fans are still talking about the “relationship” today. Here are some comments from the past few months: 

“it was a stunt but that was why she (Swift) wrote about him. Publicity.”

“and how are you guys so sure that they are just a stunt? haven’t u guys seen Harry’s reaction during interviews when asked about Taylor?”

“It’s not a PR relationship lol.. PR couples r barely a thing anymore, fans just say that when they dislike a couple”

Even when couples are obviously together just for the promotion of their work, the fans are still grasping at straws to fit their daydreams of love. People are so desperate for their favorite celebrities to be happy that they will ignore when a couple is obviously a PR stunt and hold onto their hopes that it really is love this time. 

I think the celebrity buzz is fun, but people are too obsessed. Whether it’s over-romanticizing a relationship between two friends, going crazy over couples from the distant past or obsessing over fabricated relationships, it all comes down to one thing: we don’t know these people! 

It’s fun and cute to see young love flourish or old flames rekindle, but we all need to take a deep breath, put the phone down and focus on our own lives instead.