'Someone cooked here' and our obsession with gendered TikTok trends

"Someone cooked here."

That's all I hear any time I log onto TikTok, the ghost of a once-successful show coming back to haunt me on my FYP via observations of young, single men. There's a scene in Breaking Bad in which Walter White stumbles upon evidence of someone sneaking into his lab and exclaims, "Someone cooked here." That audio has been used more than 35,000 times, and not to talk about clandestine meth labs (horrifying), but to reveal that someone else was in your partner's life before you, leaving their unique mark (worse?).

The trend took off as a way for women to talk about recognizing that their partners have learned things about themselves through their past relationship — a man with a specific skincare routine or multiple throw pillows, or sheets that aren't navy blue, for instance. Essentially, it's like a revelation that your significant other has absorbed some relationship wisdom from prior romantic escapades or relationships with women.

For instance, one video reads, "When he asks if I'm going to wear standing jeans or sitting jeans." This feels absurd to me because I cannot imagine a scenario in which asking that question out loud is reasonable but, if someone did, I would assume they have met a woman. Another video reads, "When I start texting a man and he's texting in lowercase." Another example? "When I was showering with my bf and asked him to put conditioner in my hair and he said 'Just the ends right?'" How about, "When I told my bf that I'm gonna force him to watch the Twilight franchise with me this fall and he said he's already seen it." The #someonecookedhere hashtag has over 84 million views and it feels like the majority of the videos are women being suspicious that their partners know something about women that they didn't tell them.

While this trend has taken on a gendered tinge (because it's the internet), it didn't start that way. The first video under the audio shows a workout machine with text overlaid that reads: "Me after finding the leg extensions machine maxed out." One internet doctor used the audio to say things like, "When my patient tells me they take Tylenol for pain above the neck (headache or fever) and ibuprofen for below because ibuprofen treats inflammation while Tylenol does not." A Canadian (I assume) wrote, "When I meet an American who knows how to say Toronto the right way."

The trend is fun and, whatever, harmless. But there is something dark about the consistent shock women show online when faced with a man who doesn't have to be taught something about them — or may have experienced something they consider to be inherently feminine.