the first time Molly RutterAccused by her followers of being “rage bait” (ie, someone who posts something online to make people angry), she’s about to go on a date with a money bro. He was younger – 23 to 32 – but offered to help with his taxes. Then, in a twist familiar to anyone who’s ever used a dating app, she ghosted.
Yet Rutter’s audience decided he was guilty: In the comments section, In tabloid mediaAnd he was called out on other TikToks desperate, unhingedAnd even, strangely, a “pedophile” willing to date someone younger and trust an Internet stranger with his financial information.
“It’s very funny to me,” she says now, months later. “People see this caricature of me: someone who doesn’t give a damn about what they think is self-destructive, doesn’t care about other people, emotionally unstable.”
However, it’s precisely that caricature that makes Rutter, a former teacher and now full-time content creator in Buffalo, New York, so appealing to his growing and dedicated following of 85,000 people who watch his videos. Like a modern-day Carrie Bradshaw — if the scene-y nightclubs were replaced with Hinge and the bright lights of Manhattan in a snowy euphoria — Rutter has built a budding career out of juicy, detailed posts about what the dating market might look like in 2024, and much like the audience. Sex and the City, The fans are not always on his side.
TikTok is full of Bradshaw protégés at the moment: women — mostly in their 20s and 30s, and mostly who date men — who have used the platform as their personal dating diaries, enthralling millions of viewers with multi-part stories about their own men. Nicknames, such as “Dangling earrings,” “Five date people,” or “Mr. America” Their content feels like Facetiming with your dearest chaotic single friend, who you root for even when they miss glaring red flags.
They provide a refreshingly optimistic perspective on an otherwise bleak subject. The media is currently obsessed with heterosexual dating horror stories: Main Dating apps, we’re told, are in their flop eraThey can collect money from users by paywalling their most attractive users on real matchmaking businesses. women are Tiktok is cryingTired after years of trying and failing to find a decent partner; others are going”son“And taking extended breaks from sex and dating. There’s a sense that dating these days is worse than the previous golden age in every possible way, though no one can quite put their finger on exactly when that was.
Yet every dating diary I spoke to believed the opposite of TikToker. “I’m kind of, like, delusionally optimistic about things, so I’d say dating is better than ever,” says Ann Marie Haggerty28-year-old founder of a production company in New York City. “We have many other options. You can go out and meet people, you can be on dating apps. We have social media. How to stay mentally healthy, therapy and [how to] It’s a reframe of the dating conversation that I think is pretty important to be a good partner.”
Hagerty’s videos gained traction in early 2023 when he recounted the story of meeting a man at a wedding and immediately feeling like he had found his perfect match, even though he had a girlfriend at the time. Months later, he posted a video Titled, “POV: Getting ready for the first date(?!) with who you think is your soulmate,” since he wasn’t sure if he was still single.
The date — and it was actually a date — was “the best first date of my life,” she wrote in an impromptu video, adding that it felt like she was falling in love. The man nicknamed in her content as “the first date of the soul” soon became her lover.
His commentators didn’t see it that way. “To be honest the whole thing sounds like a red flag,” wrote one. Another said: “Run”. After their last breakup, Haggerty said her audience may have chosen something she wasn’t. “They called a few months before we broke up,” she says. “The comments about him weren’t always very nice, and they turned out to be true.”
But such real-time feedback is not always welcome. Last fall, when Hagerty Plan an amazing helicopter ride A guy who thought they were just going for coffee, people mocked him with sexist jokes and “for therapy”.[ing] She’s like a princess.” “That’s the cost of doing business,” says Hagerty. But, he says, “I’m probably a chronic oversharer, but I’m also a storyteller at heart.” That’s part of why his subject matter is so compelling: “It’s a TV. It’s more like you live with the show, but TikTok is much more intimate,” she says
Wisdom SinclairA Chicago-based 24-year-old who works in data analysis for a housing nonprofit, occasionally gets heat for dating multiple men at the same time and for allegedly being a “gold digger” (sexuality is often a theme of negative reactions). Inevitably, though, his comments are either from young women who feel grateful that he’s normalizing the idea of dating around or from older women who tell him they would have done the same thing in their 20s.
“I’m a girl who wants to get married eventually, I want to have kids eventually,” Sinclair said. “But in my 20s, I think it’s really important that I learn what I like and what I don’t like, and if I settle for the first guy who makes me smile and laugh, I might be missing out on a lot. . more happiness So of course I’m going to go out and date and meet as many new people as possible, and I think a lot of women should do that.”
Rooter’s fanbase, like that of most TikTokers, consists of people who view him with some level of schadenfreude or just-like voyeurism. He is unyielding to his haters — “I always respond to people when they think I’m crazy. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m a cuckoo banana!’” she says. But recently, someone leaked his hinge profile The snark subreddit Dedicated to having fun with him. The replies were so cruel — most criticized her for allegedly “catfishing” by including old photos — that Rutter deleted her dating apps.
Sometimes, criticism comes from litigants themselves. All the TikTokers I spoke to who dealt with dates were vehemently against the idea of being mentioned online, even anonymously and even though creators took care to obscure their identities and faces.
“I know for sure that there are probably men who haven’t gone on a second date with me because of my social media. And to that I say, good riddance,” said Rutter. “It’s my job. I recognize that doing what I do is going to limit my options. Being a teacher is more socially acceptable than being an influencer on TikTok. But I don’t want to be with people who aren’t comfortable with that.”
One of her recent dates — a British man on a trip to the U.S. whom Rutter drove two hours to meet — was so upset that she asked him to delete the video he had already posted to get ready that morning. “I told him I wouldn’t [delete the videos] Because I stand by the fact that there is nothing to reveal about you,” she explains. “What I didn’t tell him was that I had already gone really viral for those videos, and I saw the amount of money I was going to make, and I thought, ‘No way are you taking $500 away from me.'”
Rutter’s dating diaries are now her livelihood: She recently quit her job teaching at a private elementary school because she was making thousands more from TikTok’s Creator Rewards program, which allows eligible users to earn cash for views, than she was from her salaried position (Parent ) also complained to the school about his videos, although he says he never violated its social media policy). He’s also had success with Cameo, the app that lets you book personalized video messages from celebrities and influencers. In less than two weeks, Rutter said he booked 50 of them at $20 each.
Michelle KnutsonA 30-year-old realtor living on a rural farm outside of Nashville, has found that posting about her dating life has brought other pleasant surprises. He hasn’t made money or found a partner, but he’s met some of his best friends through the platform, women who relate to his approach to dating — that is, waiting to find someone who truly adds to his already great life — Many of their colleagues were settling down with husbands and children.
Knutson speculates that the reason many women (and the majority of Dating Diaries’ audience is female) find her content so compelling is that it’s a huge break from the way influencers typically post. “You know what to post when you’re pregnant: It’s your gender reveal, your nursery receipt, the names you liked but didn’t choose — it’s familiar with this cadence. It’s very content, but it’s very protected and very curated,” she says. “I feel like if I’m saying, ‘Here’s the date I went on and I blew it,’ or ‘That was embarrassing,’ people look at themselves in that mirror. Gets, ‘Oh, so do I, but I would never share it on the Internet.’
Haggerty says that when she started posting about dating, her audience shifted older to women in their 30s to 50s. “If you’re married, dating content is interesting because it’s like, ‘What’s going on out there these days?’ Then if you’re single, you’re empathetic and you’re like, ‘How are we navigating the scene?'” she says.
For Rutter, the answer to why she shares such an intimate part of her life — and sometimes opens herself up to harsh judgment — is much more personal. “Because of my body type, I think it can be really beautiful and inspiring to see someone so laid-back and confident. Seeing someone confident can be equally uncomfortable for someone,” she says. “It’s almost as though [people think]’She shouldn’t be so confident because of her body. Dating must be difficult for him.’
Now that content creation is his full-time job, Rutter is ready for more scrutiny from his commenters, Reddit and the rest of the Internet. But that hasn’t stopped her: She’s already planning a podcast, writing a children’s book, and dreams of someday becoming a professional speaker or, if the stars align, working on a dating reality TV show. A soul mate? That would be fine – as long as he’s cool with the camera.
