Tom Holland and Zendaya attend SiriusXM’s Town Hall with the cast of Spider-Man: No Way Home in New … [+] York City. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
Getty Images for SiriusXM
It’s only early January and one of the biggest celebrity stories of the year may have already dropped: Zendaya and Tom Holland are reportedly engaged. The actor couple have been one of Hollywood’s most prominent partnerships since meeting on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming back in 2017, and this news has unsurprisingly caused a storm online.
The internet, of course, can’t get excited in a. normal way. Instead, it’s gone into overdrive, with people making memes and posting about the potential Zendaya and Tom Holland engagement in a variety of unchill ways.
Yet while there’s plenty of positivity, some of the online reaction to the rumored Zendaya and Tom Holland engagement shows a darker side to the internet, and shows how social media can warp reality and blur the line between public figures and regular people.
Before we get there though…
Who Are Zendaya And Tom Holland?
Zendaya is an American actor and famed public figure, with Time naming her on its list of the 100 most influential people of 2022. Some of her most prominent movies include the Dune series, and 2024’s surprise hit Challengers.
Tom Holland is also an actor, but hails from England instead of the United States. He’s most famous for playing Spider Man in a range of Marvel movies, including several of the Avengers series, which are some of the highest grossing films of all time.
Rumors about the pair’s engagement spread after Zendaya was spotted wearing a ring at the Golden Globes, but it was TMZ who first reported the news, saying that it was confirmed by “sources close to the couple.”
At the time of writing, Zendaya and Tom Holland haven’t publicly confirmed their engagement, but the internet hasn’t let that stop it creating memes and posting wildly. It’s that specific response we’ll be analyzing today.
How Has The Internet Reacted To The Zendaya And Tom Holland Engagement?
The online response to the rumor is broad, with an array of different types of posts, ranging from simple jokes to deeper comments on their relationship.
Some of the most prominent examples are simple memes and quips, such as this one regarding the actors’ names:
And this post displaying excitement about the rumored news:
Other examples of posts about the Zendaya and Tom Holland engagement jokingly comment on why they may be getting married:
This trend of getting involved in the personal life of the actors goes deeper though. For example, this meme makes mention of intimate parts of Zendaya and Tom Holland’s relationship, assuming it knows about their private lives:
The Zendaya And Tom Holland Engagement Reaction: What Does It Mean?
We can split the way the online world has responded to the rumors of Zendaya’s and Tom Holland’s engagement into two broad camps. The first are the light-hearted jokes, and the second are those that comment directly, and often negatively, on their relationship.
The comic posts and memes have a simple explanation. Zendaya and Tom Holland are prominent and well-known public figures. Making jokes about their relationship and potential engagement is an easy way to get likes and connect with other people online.
This is driven by a simple bit of science: social media interaction directly correlates to the release of dopamine in users’ brains. In other words, when someone likes or comments on a post you made, it feels good. Getting social media users to engage with a post about celebrities is an easy avenue to achieve this—and build an online community.
The second aspect of the posts though, specifically why people comment on Zendaya’s and Tom Holland’s relationship and personal lives, is less clear:
A key element of the modern world and social media is how people form parasocial relationships with accounts they follow. In a nutshell, this is when individuals believe they actually know the public figure that’s posting on social media. They see so much from the famous person online, followers can begin to feel as though they’re actually friends with the poster.
With Zendaya and Tom Holland being A-list stars—and their relationship continually reported upon—this makes people feel as though they have some skin in the game. To reposition that, because users have followed the pair for years, they feel as though they’re close enough with them to comment on personal aspects of their existence.
Combined with the “online disinhibition effect,” a piece of research that shows people act in ways on the internet they wouldn’t in the real world, this means some members of the public both have the means and believe they have the right to negatively comment on stories like the rumored Zendaya and Tom Holland engagement.
So, that’s exactly what they do.
Social media platforms encourage people to post and engage, so when news about the potential marriage of Zendaya and Tom Holland drops, users are compelled to create content and make memes about it.
Much of this can be benign and amusing, but there are also accounts that will push this to the extreme, as they feel they know the pair and have the right to comment, even if that contains something they wouldn’t say in the real world.
While this could one day change—especially if algorithms change and no longer prioritize engagement—that feels a long way off.
Whatever happens, let’s just hope that if the rumors of the Zendaya and Tom Holland engagement are true, they stay far away from social media.
