Crushing

These bizarre TikTok ads created Gen Z’s newest heartthrob

· Updated on March 20, 2024

The internet’s crushes can come from anywhere: TV, movies, music, or random memes, to name a few. But a low-budget romantic short-form video series being aggressively advertised on TikTok? That’s a new one.

The series in question is called Forbidden Desires: Alpha’s Love — and yes, it’s as cheesy and fanfiction-y as it sounds. The show caught the internet’s attention when influencer @fatfabfeminist posted a clip from it, saying, “Guys please watch this insane ad I just got on TikTok.”

The ad in question features a truly bizarre scenario, in which a college student, Chloe, is apparently pranked into entering the men’s locker room, where her professor, Adrian, is wearing only a towel. To avoid suspicion of being alone together, he inexplicably picks her up and holds her around his waist, complete with dramatic slo-mo and sound effects.

The writers of Forbidden Desires couldn’t seem to pick just one fanfic trope to run with. Instead, they did all of them, as @fatfabfeminist covered in her thread. Adrian is not only Chloe’s professor, but also her stepbrother and … a werewolf? Yep, a werewolf.

But folks on social media were less concerned with the series’ questionable writing, and more interested in finding the actor behind Professor Adrian. He quickly earned his own fancams and thirst posts, and for good reason: if Forbidden Desires got one thing right, it was casting a hunky leading man.

After some digging, the man in question is Austin Prebula, an actor with a TikTok account of his own. Now, his comments are filled with new fans, begging him to leak the rest of the Forbidden Desires series (the full show is paywalled in the ShortTV app, which costs a one-time purchase of $49.99).

Prebula has yet to comment on his newfound fame, but hopefully he’ll welcome the attention. Until then, the TikTok ads will have to tide his fans over.

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Tags: Thirst TikTok
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