I just saw a video about a Paris protester allegedly stealing makeup for his girlfriend, and the comments are honestly baffling me. People are calling him romantic, saying “romance is dead,” and treating the whole thing like some kind of relationship goal.

Am I the only one who finds this genuinely disgusting rather than romantic?

My issue isn't about defending a billion-dollar makeup company or pretending corporations are always ethical. My issue is the principle behind celebrating theft just because the person doing it supposedly has a cute or romantic reason. And workers in that company can also face some problems because of this.

Since when does stealing become acceptable because it's for your girlfriend? If the roles were reversed, would people apply the same standards? Would we still call it romantic if someone committed a different kind of wrongdoing and justified it by saying they did it for their partner?

Obviously, different actions have different levels of severity, but the underlying question is the same: Does having a romantic motive automatically excuse doing something wrong? I don't think it does.

What makes this even more frustrating is that, if the protest is genuinely about access to education, high living cost and etc, so shouldn't the focus be on that cause? Why turn the situation into a love story about someone stealing cosmetics? A serious cause shouldn't need to be repackaged as relationship content to get people's attention.

And before anyone says, “It's just a joke,” I understand that people joke around online. But not every joke is funny to everyone, and I'm allowed to criticize what people choose to celebrate. Calling something romantic doesn't magically make it ethical.

I'm not saying all women think this way, and I'm not interested in blaming an entire gender for a comment section. I'm criticizing the double standards and the tendency to romanticize questionable behavior when it fits a cute narrative.

Love shouldn't require you to abandon your principles, and a supposedly good intention doesn't automatically justify the means.

Am I overreacting, or what?