Who TF Did I Marry? What is the true face of the one I married? This is the question that haunts the American Reesa Teesa and which kicks off her astonishing digital soap opera, a psychological drama in 50 episodes which has mobilized Internet users since its release on February 14.
I too was caught up in the story of her former marriage to a man she nicknamed Legion, a guy she met on a dating app and whom she now describes as a pathological liar. It took me more than eight hours to watch his entire story, an epic story that is now talked about around the world. Yet, Who TF Did I Marry? is nothing like an expensive film production broadcast on Netflix. Rather, it is a compilation of TikTok videos in which a previously unknown woman speaks to the camera without any fuss, behind the wheel of her vehicle or in the comfort of her home, curlers in her hair. The new muse of the web has undeniable talents as a storyteller: in the space of just a few days, her cathartic story has earned her more than 3 million new subscribers.
The monster popularity of Who TF Did I Marry? also seems in line with the new direction advocated by the Chinese video application, which encourages creators to produce longer content. If TikTok once had ultra-short videos as its trademark, the platform now allows you to upload clips that can last up to 10 minutes. This entrepreneurial decision influences the type of content produced and allows long-form stories like Reesa’s to flourish on the app.
Check out Reesa Teesa’s account on TikTok
Romantic vigilance
The series of this cheated woman is also in the wake of the #metoo denunciation movement, and testifies to a culture of romantic vigilance, particularly among heterosexual women. If Reesa opens up to us, it’s because she says she wants to prevent other women from making the same mistakes as her. In the 50 episodes of her series, she distils hard-earned wisdom, peppered with think-about-it ideas. The American ends up enjoining us to “do our research” and to check the background of our suitors carefully, especially if we know little about them, which is also quite common in this day and age. dating digital.
Reesa Teesa is not the only one to issue such warnings.
All over the web, women protect each other against the predators they encounter on their path. They tell their horror stories by putting on makeup in front of us, blotting away their tears with beauty blender and list the red flags (red flags) that they ignored despite themselves.
In 2022, I followed with interest the saga surrounding “West Elm Caleb”, a serial seducer who was rampant on the dating application Hinge, in New York, and who worked for the West Elm furniture company. When many TikTokers realized that they shared similar experiences with this expert in ghosting, he had become the laughing stock of the application and had even been the victim of a harassment campaign. This outburst had also raised numerous reflections on the pitfalls of online denunciations, in particular those which snowball and which end up escaping the control of their instigator.
There dating fatigue
Last year, it was the turn of the “Tabi thief” to have a bad time on TikTok. The suitor Tinder was denounced after stealing a pair of luxurious Maison Margiela shoes from his one-night stand. Once the report went viral, the thief was identified and ended up returning the stolen shoes. It must be said that by publicizing the violence they suffer, women are forcing men to be held accountable. And despite the relative anonymity that dating applications give them, they learn the hard way that they cannot act with impunity.
This culture of romantic vigilance is also deployed out of sight, on Telegram channels or private Facebook groups like Are we dating the same guy? (Are We Dating the Same Guy?), places where women share information about their suitor, make sure he doesn’t date not others, warn others against those they consider toxic or who have violated them. Furthermore, such initiatives are far from being marginal. The Are we dating the same guy? associated with the cities of Montreal, Quebec and Sherbrooke alone has 35,000 members. The popularity of this type of group and the cultural resonance of Reesa Teesa point to a worrying reality: in the world of datingwomen are right to be wary.
We hear more and more about what we call dating fatigue, a melancholy specific to the use of dating applications which, by gamifying romantic conquest, have given it the appearance of a game of chance. The future of dating apps may lie in products where users are more accountable for their actions, and where distrust can give way to trust. In the meantime, Reesa Teesa is here to tell women who have been fooled to keep their heads up: this kind of situation can happen to anyone.