This Video Makes The Rom-Com "Meet-Cute" Realistic

Everyone dreams of a good "meet-cute", especially if you live in a big city and are constantly carrying lots of papers/coffee/in a hurry/perturbed/have forsaken the quest for love but deep down are such a romantic that you could easily be drawn back in. The meet-cute, for the uninitiated, is that moment in a rom-com when the two players (who will ultimately end up together after a montage of falling in love, subsequent conflict, and final grand gesture of commitment) meet for the first time, and it's always both clumsy and adorable. This kind of meeting, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you, is not always like this in real life, which is what prompted Ilana Michelle Rubin to make a video of what actually transpires when people meet on the mean streets of New York City. Which is to say, a lot of weird and somewhat creepy, insane stuff.

From rubbing pizza on her face to get the attention of a fellow she's just seen to pouring garlic salt down her top, Ilana harnesses the pure ridiculousness of that moment when you suddenly decide you need to be sexy. This will likely seem completely foreign and incomprehensible to some of you, but there are others—those of us for whom banal every day situations are always seen as our own personal scenes for falling in love with strangers—who will totally relate to this. Ilana captures exactly how much it's not going to happen in her video, and at least for me, makes me feel better about every time I've tried to flick my hair to impress a stranger on the subway and ended up with it caught in chewing gum or in the mouth of my neighbor. Watch the video below.

And if you still insist that a meet-cute is possible, here are some ways you can try falling in love with a stranger:

Looking cute on a ferris wheel while on a date, hoping to be spotted by some Gosling-grade hottie on the ground, who will then climb up to where you are and force you to ask him out.

Spilling coffee on a movie star in one of London's most beautiful neighborhoods, because love with your favorite celebrity is just a Starbucks order and a clumsy spill away.

Singing a song in the forest so any rogue wandering princes will spy on you and then decide to join in (in a not creepy at all way).

Falling down in front of a cab because, according to movies, at least three stupidly attractive women hurl themselves in front of taxis a year only to be rescued by stupidly attractive men they will go on to fall in love with and marry.

Loitering near the snacks table at a party policing people's caviar quantities because you never know, your professional rival slash cyber boyfriend could turn up there, and—TWIST—wind up being the same person who you will both hate and love.

Images: Columbia Pictures; Giphy (5)