The Proposal That Gave Women a Hard On & Made Men Cry.

For years we've been told that outrage spreads faster than kindness, that bad news always wins, that controversy drives clicks. That the internet rewards conflict, anger, division, and fear because those are the emotions people engage with most. Open any social media platform and you're almost guaranteed to be met with another breakup, another scandal, another argument, another reminder that apparently everyone is cheating, nobody communicates anymore, and humanity is one inconvenience away from complete emotional collapse.

Negativity has become so normal that we've almost started treating it as realism. Optimism became naïve, romance became cringe… Hope became something you quietly outgrow.

And then, two people climbed to the top of the Empire State Building carrying a banner that read:

"When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace."

As if that wasn't enough, moments later, Ivan Beerkus got down on one knee and proposed to Angela Nikolau. And somehow… the internet forgot how to be cynical. Or perhaps, more accurately, it remembered who it wanted to be?! Cuz man, here's what fascinated me when I woke up to this story and saw it all over! (I am currently on Bali time, so news arrives to me later, ok?) It wasn't really the proposal that stood out to me. It's really cool, yeah, but fuck, DID YOU READ THE COMMENTS??! The comments are the actual story here…

Listen, just trust me on this, the internet has a funny way of revealing what people are secretly craving. Not what they claim to value, but what they actually miss. Millions of people watched Angela and Ivan standing 1,454 feet above New York City. Two professional rooftop climbers doing something objectively insane, yet somehow making it feel strangely intimate. The comments could have been filled with criticism, debates about legality, lectures about safety, or people dismissing it as another stunt for attention.

Instead… people are full-on confessing! Not about the climb, but about themselves.

"May this kind of love find us." wrote @pope.art.

"If I don't get this type of love, I don't want it." admitted @ky_seppy.

"This is the most romantic thing I've ever seen." commented @l1ly_luz.

"This is the kind of love I've been preaching about." wrote @marc_thegreat08.

One person simply said,

"And they say romance is dead." (@safnuranisa)

The comments aren't really about Angela and Ivan anymore, they are about everyone watching.

I really think that somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing examples of love that felt... I don't know, aspirational? We've spent years consuming stories about cheating scandals, situationships, breadcrumbing, emotional unavailability, "nonchalant men," commitment issues, ghosting, and people treating vulnerability as something to avoid at all costs. We've already talked about this….

We've normalized emotional detachment, we've romanticized people who don't text back, we've confused inconsistency with mystery, we've turned mixed signals into personality traits. Red flags into entertainment, chaos into content.

And maybe that's why this proposal landed with such force. Yeah, someone climbed a skyscraper. And millions of people suddenly remembered what effort looks like… I am about to laugh and cry, both at the same time if that’s okay. 

One comment really stopped me in my tracks.

"This is how desperate we are for change btw." wrote @yesiahlema.

I swear, that single sentence might explain the entire phenomenon better than anything else. Because people aren't celebrating two climbers. They are celebrating the possibility that the world hasn't become as emotionally bankrupt as we've convinced ourselves it has. What if we haven't become cynical because we stopped believing in love? What if it's because we've stopped seeing it? Those are two veeeery different things!

One of my favourite theories in psychology is that human beings imitate what they repeatedly witness. We don't just copy fashion, we copy behaviour, we copy expectations, we copy standards. Which makes me wonder… If toxic relationships can become contagious… Can healthy ones as well??! Because I don't think millions of people closed Instagram wanting to climb skyscrapers. I sure didn't. I think they left wanting to love better, to be braver, to choose more intentionally, to stop settling, to believe that maybe grand gestures aren't dead after all.

Healthy love doesn't only affect the two people inside the relationship, it quietly raises the standard for everyone watching. My standards were already pretty high, but babe, you best believe now they're at least 1,454 feet above New York City as we speak!

We are literally seeing this shift happen in real time.

"If he wanted to, he would." wrote @caroleradziwill.

While another commenter joked the same thing,

"Ladies if he wanted to, he would 😂" (@ivanaiquana)

Under almost any other post, that phrase would have been another cynical meme. Here, it is becoming something different, a reminder that effort still exists, that intention still exists, that devotion still exists, not just to love but to purpose!

And then there was another comment I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

"I showed my coworkers and they said it's stupid and that's when I realized I work with people who believe in nothing." wrote @toji_higuruma.

Now, whether you agree with that statement or not is almost beside the point, because it captures something I think many people are feeling. We've become so afraid of disappointment that we've started mocking hope before it has a chance to disappoint us. I mean, it's safer that way… If you roll your eyes first, you can't get hurt later. If you call romance unrealistic, you never have to admit you wanted it. If you dismiss grand gestures as cringe, nobody can accuse you of caring too much. But here's the funny thing, the internet's reaction to Angela and Ivan completely shattered that illusion.

People care. A LOT!

Some of the most-liked comments weren't jokes, they were aspirations.

"We need more courageous people on this 🌍." wrote @james.sayles.927.

"Finally, people standing up for love in this time." wrote @sharonpeace67.

"The perfect message for these times." wrote @amgombas.

"Respect. No one hurt. Message delivered. Proposal accepted." wrote @lainie.tay.

People aren't just responding to a proposal, they are responding to what it symbolizes. Hope, courage, devotion, the belief that perhaps love can still be loud.

Even the banner itself is worth sitting with for a moment. It didn't say: "Win." It didn't say: "Choose a side." It didn't say: "Defeat your enemies." It simply said:

"When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace."

Whether you read that politically, spiritually, or simply as two people expressing what they believe, it touched something UNIVERSAL. Regardless of where we come from or what we believe… Almost everyone agrees the world could use a little more LOVE!

This is probably also why half the internet immediately started calling them Batman and Catwoman. At first, it seemed like nothing more than a funny comment, a meme. But the more I think about it, the more it makes perfect sense.

Superheroes have never just been people in capes. They've always represented ordinary humans willing to risk something bigger than themselves. They remind us that courage still exists, that conviction still exists, that there are still people willing to act on what they believe instead of simply talking about it.

This is why this comparison resonated on another level. Not because Angela and Ivan climbed a skyscraper, but cuz they reminded people what heroes actually look like. And I personally think that's what I've been starving for all along. Not more influencers, not more celebrities, not more people telling us what's wrong with the world. But HEROES!!!

The kind who don't show up carrying weapons, the kind who show up carrying a banner that simply reads:

"When the power of love beats the love of power, the world knows peace."

Yes, I am repeating this again and again on purpose, some things deserve to echo a little longer…

My final thought is that this is so much bigger than a proposal.. A proposal that was perhaps a tiny bit dangerous and maybe... just a liiiiiittle illegal…. People aren't just watching two climbers, they are watching two people choose hope in a world that profits from hopelessness, they are watching devotion in an era obsessed with detachment, they are watching effort in a culture that celebrates convenience. Man, we are watching tenderness become rebellious!

That's why millions of strangers suddenly found themselves smiling at people they'd never met. For a few fleeting moments… they reminded the rest of us that the world we've almost convinced ourselves no longer exists... still does. And maybe it's always been in our hands.