What was once a niche release back in February 2025 is now finding new life on TikTok, where Gen Z listeners use it as the soundtrack for their most fragile confessions: soft longing, heartbreak, and the terrifying beauty of wanting to be consumed by love.

The song’s premise of love as cannibalism might sound jarring on paper. Yet in Fitterkarma’s melodies, it feels almost sacred. “Pag-ibig ay kanibalismo,” because love, as it turns out, is a kind of devouring—of boundaries, of certainty, of the self.

In “Pag-Ibig ay Kanibalismo II,” intimacy isn’t soft or pastel, it’s raw, tactile, and a little feral. fitterkarma’s lyrics thread through the tension between tenderness and hunger: the kind of affection that both nourishes and consumes. 

Online, fans describe the song as “disturbingly beautiful” or “the closest thing to spiritual heartbreak.” There’s a reason for that. Gen Z, raised in the era of oversharing and emotional hypervisibility, seems to be collectively drawn to the kind of love that’s too intense to survive — one that blurs the line between desire and destruction. “Pag-Ibig ay Kanibalismo II” is not just about love. It’s about the price of being seen completely, and what’s left when you are.

This fascination isn’t confined to music, even to Filipino artists or audiences. Take visual artist Maria Lara’s piece Pomegranate Love, where two figures entwine over the spilling fruit while its juice stains their hands.

“Like the apple, the pomegranate is also a symbol of love, but I chose this fruit for the way its insides look a lot like meat,” the artist shared on her Instagram post. 

The pomegranate, a symbol of life and death, becomes a stand-in for love’s duality: sweet, violent, and impossible to contain. Much like Fitterkarma’s song, it depicts intimacy as something that leaves marks. 

The song’s resurgence also taps into a global cultural undercurrent. Across various media forms, we see the same hunger play out on Bones and All’s tender cannibal romance, and even on Ethel Cain’s album Preacher’s Daughter where love feels like both worship and consumption. Each narrative explores the same aching truth that in wanting to love fully, we also risk annihilation.

These stories, much like Pag-Ibig ay Kanibalismo II, expose something hauntingly modern about our generation’s view of intimacy. Love isn’t clean or detached anymore. It’s messy, obsessive, and self-consuming. It’s the fantasy of being known so deeply that you disappear into someone else’s hunger.

Part of what makes Fitterkarma’s rediscovery so fascinating is how it reflects Gen Z’s comfort with discomfort.The song asks the question: what happens when love stops being aesthetic and starts being devouring?

The resurgence of “Pag-Ibig ay Kanibalismo II” isn’t just a case of a viral revival. It’s a testament to how art, when honest enough, becomes timeless. It reminds us that even in the internet age, sincerity still cuts the deepest.

Fitterkarma might not have intended the song to become a mirror for an entire generation, but that’s exactly what it has become: a love letter written in bite marks. A reminder that to love, truly, is to be consumed and to consume in return.

Released on February 14, 2025, the viral song from the Filipino genre-bending indie rock band fitterkarma is currently sitting at the 29th spot of Apple Music Philippines’ Top 100, 9th on Spotify’s Top 50 Philippines, and climbed spots after debut on Billboard PH’s charts at number 30 as of writing. 

PHOTOS from PIYAMARILOO and FITTERKARMA (via Instagram)