True love is dead and everything is just a cynical plot to extract your money, it emerged today, when the First Kiss video featuring "strangers" making out was found to be just a commercial for an autumn/winter clothing line.

The video delighted many millions with its awkward charm, seeing strangers paired off and working up the courage to kiss for the first time.

The nuzzles, nervous laughter and silence-filling comments were not entirely spontaneous though, with most of the participants being actors or models and the video itself being a covert way of boosting clothing sales for the brand Wren Studio.

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According to Slate, the cast included: "Natalia Bonifacci, Ingrid Schram, and Langley Fox (daughter of actress Mariel Hemingway and sister of model Dree); musicians Z Berg of The Like, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Justin Kennedy of Army Navy, singer Nicole Simone, and singer-actress Soko (who also performed the melancholy indie music that accompanies the short); and actors Karim Saleh, Matthew Carey, Jill Larson, Corby Griesenbeck, Elisabetta Tedla, Luke Cook, and Marianna Palka."

Really the clues were there, with one participant saying during the video: "Since you’re an actress, you’ve done this before, and… I’ll follow your lead then."

This all serves to explain why each kiss was so cinematic, why each participant was so good looking and why their awkwardness so quickly blossomed into passion.

The news sets the stage for another filmmaker to use actual strangers, a video which would probably be a more interesting social experiment but infinitely less shareable.