Depending on where you look, there are many different ideas about what makes an ideal male partner. If you’re living in a romance novel, he could be the classic, brooding bad boy or the sweet, unassuming boy next door. If you’re lurking in dark corners of the internet, there’s alpha, beta and sigma males. On TikTok, male archetypes take an animal form. There’s orange cat boys, dobermans, huskies and an overwhelming favorite: golden retriever boys.
Golden retriever boys — also called golden retriever boyfriends, as the end goal is to date one — are a lot like the breed they’re named after. They’re universally liked and inoffensive, outgoing and follow you from room to room looking for attention, love and treats. Today, the hashtag “goldenretrieverboy” has over 86 million views on TikTok, but the term has been floating around the internet for as long as the past two years. Under the tag, you’ll find users proudly sharing videos of their golden retriever boyfriend excitedly greeting them as they get home from work, bringing them their favorite Dunkin’ order as a surprise and affectionately wrapping their arms around their significant others. In a world filled with toxic masculinity and conservatives lamenting the decline of alpha men, a golden retriever boyfriend doesn’t even know what the word “simp” means.
