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Good weddings don’t necessarily mean the marriage will be good, and bad weddings don’t doom a marriage from the start. That said, there are still certain expectations, especially on the part of the bride and groom.
Take this video of a Turkish newlywed who, after being fed part of his wife’s cake slice, stole another bite. Reddit user poopOnU found this on Streamable and shared it on the site’s Videos page, with the title “When a pompous jerk gets married.” It promptly got over 18,000 upvotes and 3,000 aghast comments from around the world.
The video starts innocuously enough: a bride offers a spoonful of cake to her husband. After he takes a bite, he grabs his own spoon and takes another bit of her slice. If this is a little joke, it falls flat – his stony expression doesn’t help. She then continues eating her cake, her face downcast. This isn’t the worst groom these people have seen: two commenters linked videos of husbands slapping brides while feeding cake. However, that didn’t stop them from feeling appalled.
A Few Choice Comments
“I thought he was trying to be funny at first, then it just became mean,” wrote nuoc_man. This is the top comment in the entire comments section. The top response to this comment attempts to identify what went wrong. ndzZ said, “It could have been the sweetest, most cheerful thing. If he would just have given a bite of cake to her afterwards.”
One Turkish user recognized the wedding as being in Turkey based on the background music. Another replied by lamenting, “When the song came in, I was actually upset that I was right.” Unfortunately, this identification spurred responses condemning the culture as backwards, including some from Westerners that teeter on racist.
More worthy of your time is an analysis from alohalii that was gilded twice for its insight. They connected this groom’s standoffish behavior to a deeper problem in Turkish culture with toxic masculinity. It begins, “In a society where monopoly of violence has not been given to the state … every man must act as his own police, judge and enforcer thus masculinity and aggression and violence potential … becomes the highest valued asset …”
Some more food for thought is this comment from user Porcelo. In describing a Turkish co-worker, they wrote, “I’ve never met anyone, to this day, who despised Turks more than he did … I always thought he was being overly harsh.”
Disclaimer: Lack of Information
Unfortunately, I could not find much information on the bride and groom themselves. The original Streamable video lacks a description or even a title. None of the comments on the Reddit post provide any context, and none of my research turned up anything. For this, I apologize.