Man's Instagram tribute to his 'curvy wife' sparks massive backlash

There’s a general cycle of things on the internet these days.

It tends to go like this:

• thing goes viral as an example of ‘the best thing on the internet today’
• folks share it under that principle
• someone points out that ‘wait, actually is it that good?’ and it fails to hold up to even the slightest scrutiny
• the backlash and the jokes begin
• people find bad things that the person responsible for ‘the best thing on the internet today’ did in the past
• said person is worse off than before the original post

This week’s subject is Robbie Tripp, a TEDx speaker (yeah we know) who posted the following tribute to his wife Sarah.

To begin with, we saw headlines like this:

But then it dawned on people: hang on, is this guy just patting himself on the back for finding his wife attractive? Is the bar really that low?

Some wondered aloud how Mrs Tripp might feel about being the passive object of the Instagram post, and how they might feel if their own partner tried something similar.

The copycat posts began.

And before long, the phrase ‘curvy wife’ (or ‘thicc wife’) became a meme in and of itself.

Oh, and if you’re wondering how long the Tripps took to get from ‘inspirational’ to ‘problematic’, here’s your answer.

Some will say nothing good has come of this episode, but that’s not entirely true. One day, the parable of the curvy wife will be taught in history classes about the decline of the west.

Remember this episode, so you can talk about it to your children, and your children’s children, and say “I was there”.

(Main image: Instagram/Robbie Tripp)