An elaborate proposal in Central Park went viral on TikTok — but the gesture received “nasty” reactions online, prompting one half of the couple to speak out against negativity from social media.
28-year-old Linn Ekebom was delighted when her girlfriend, now fiance, went down on one knee to propose to her in New York’s Central Park.
This wasn’t any old proposal, though; it included a flash mob set to Bruno Mars’ song, ‘Marry Me.’ The moment was, as Ekebom described it, “cringy, embarrassing — it was all that good stuff that a proposal is supposed to be.”
Despite being thrilled with the proposal, other netizens were not as impressed. A bystander apparently recorded a video of the proposal and posted it to TikTok, where they allegedly criticized the flash mob.
Central Park proposal goes viral and gets response from couple
According to a report from the Mirror, people could be heard saying “This is not the way to do it,” in the now-deleted video that took social media by storm. The TikTok allegedly garnered a slew of negative comments flaming the proposal, as well.
Unfortunately for Ekebom, the video had gone viral before she had time to tell her family in Finland about her engagement and feared that they’d see it before she had a chance to FaceTime them in the morning.
In fact, one of her friends had already congratulated her after viewing the clip — and she hadn’t posted anything about it online.
This led Ekebom to speak out against the negativity surrounding her proposal online, where she urged netizens to think about how their words might affect others.
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“I wanna address this whole chronically online thing, because I feel like this fits into that. The younger generation has started to become the older generation on social media, with no regard to other people’s feelings.”
“I get upset about the fact that people are so nasty with no regard to like, oh, maybe this person who just got engaged is also on social media and maybe seeing this the night of her engagement.”
Commenters left an outpouring of support for Ekebom underneath her TikTok, which has racked up over 600,000 views since being posted yesterday.
The TikToker also responded to certain comments arguing that since the proposal was so grandiose and public, people were allowed to have opinions about it, positive or negative.
“My opinion still stands,” she said in a follow-up video. “It’s all about kindness. Be kind and respectful.”
This isn’t the first time a proposal has taken TikTok by storm. In 2022, a proposal went viral after a worker at Disneyland Paris interrupted the moment to lead the couple away from their spot to another location in the park.