Lindsey Donnelly’s TikTok was supposed to be relatable. Last summer, she had an argument with her husband that any partner, family member or roommate knows all too well: He felt like she was doing all the housework and he was doing none of it. So he decided to prove otherwise.
Donnelly did nothing for two days. Then he Post proof What a two-parent, two-kid family looks like when mom refuses to clean up — laundry open, toys on the floor, dirty dishes on the counter — set to Taylor Swift’s “Karma.” Within a day, his video had a million views, many women who found it funny or watched it. “Overwhelmingly, it was a lot of, ‘You go Queen!'” says Donnelly. And then there were others.
This story first appeared in The Highlight.
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A year and 20 million views later, almost all of the likes on Donnelly’s video are people asking her to divorce her husband. “I honestly want to get divorce papers. It’s unacceptable that he can’t get along,” wrote one. “Don’t let your husband stop you from finding your soul mate, honey,” said another. Many women relate to this, but not in the way Donnelly intended: “The same thing happened to me. Filed for divorce yesterday.”
“People commenting on my relationship and saying things like ‘get divorced’ — I was upset about that,” says Donnelly, founder of a social media management firm. Authentic community marketingHe adds that he is still happily married. “It can feel disproportionately painful, because even though a hundred people tell you you’re beautiful, you hear one person tell you you have spinach in your teeth.”
Perhaps no one said it better than Britney Spears, who in 2002 wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Dump Him” after her breakup with Justin Timberlake. For two decades, emotional echoes have become a staple of advice for women in heterosexual relationships on the Internet. Any TikTok or Instagram relay posted by a woman with a male partner who looks anything less than happy in her presence, the comments are usually flooded with “divorce him” or some variation of the red flag emoji.
Comments can go to extremes: when Posted by a woman Her husband’s indifferent reaction to her new hair, an onlooker Said her husband reminded her of Chris Watts, the Colorado man who killed her entire family.
Messy and unpredictable Internet comment sections are nothing new, of course: Joseph Regal, associate professor of communication at Northeastern University and author Reading Comments: Likers, Haters and Manipulators at the Bottom of the WebUsing the metaphor of a “rotten barrel”. It refers to the effect an environment can have on human behavior, as opposed to the effect a single bad person (the proverbial rotten apple) can have on the bunch. Especially nasty comment sections, she says, can feel liberating for those participating in them, and the gossipy nature of judging other people’s relationships satisfies the urge to create narratives. “People love a mystery,” Riggle says. “They like to make predictions and see what can come of them.”
This overall policy of “divorce him” may have more to do with the fraught relationships between the sexes at the moment, both online and off. A growing sense that men and women are drifting apart from each other, politically and culturally. women have Become more progressive in recent yearsAnd in view of this Roe v. WadeIts death, they doubled Their support for abortion rights; Some men (and some women too), meanwhile, are preaching Reversible gender roles In response to Me Too. “I’ll take the bear” is a sentiment you’re likely to see in comments on social media videos, referring to the question of whether a woman should be allowed to be alone in the woods with a bear or a man.
Hence, divorce advice is everywhere. For decades, feminists have extolled the virtues of separation while criticizing the systemic control of women through marriage. Now that Fewer people are getting marriedAnd who marry laterThere is less emphasis on monogamous romance in general, and greater acceptance and interest in monogamy, platonic partnerships, and “eccentric” men.
Influencers like Given Florence Turned out to be “dump him!” In Instagram-ready t-shirts and art prints; Earlier this year, journalist Lyz Lenz was released This American ex-wife, which tells the story of her own divorce and the social history of how marriage benefits men behind women’s unpaid labor.
The blanket suggestion for women to exclude men altogether was not without its own criticism. “‘Dump Him’ feminism is not revolutionary. it’s hardLeft-wing journalist Ash Sarkar wrote in 2022. “The recognition that the weight of psychological baggage is unevenly distributed has, among some contemporary feminists, transformed the idea that any Obligation itself is the enemy,” he wrote.
Yet this has led some women to take to social media to wonder if they should actually dump him. Over the past year, the trends that supposedly determine whether your relationship has solidified or expanded on TikTok and Relay. One of the most popular is the “orange peel test,” where you give your partner an orange and ask them to peel it for you. If they do that without question, they are a keeper. If they ask something like, “Why can’t you peel yourself?” — Run
there is Dozens moreIncluding the “bird test” (point to something as small as a bird and see if they respond enthusiastically), the “Beckham test” (start dancing to a song and see if they join you), and “a woman’s name,” So you ask them to name a woman and hope they tell you.
As the psychologist and author Alexandra Solomon told my colleague Alex Abad-Santos about the orange peel “theory,” “a whole intimate relationship cannot be boiled down to what a partner does or doesn’t do with an orange,” adding, “My concern is that What’s more is that I prefer to talk directly with our partners about our needs rather than setting tests. And of course, rather than setting up a test that’s public, because I think the risk here is humiliation.”
Humiliation awaits many who post videos about their relationships, often coming in ways they never expected. Any evidence of bad relationship behavior — even by ordinary, non-famous people — can lead to an online manhunt. In June, a woman took a series of videos of a man wearing a wedding ring and flirting and making out with the woman sitting next to him on a plane. He then posted them, writing, “Do your thing TikTok.” In one day, the commenters were found The man and his family, posting photos from their social media profiles and praising the original poster for being a “girl’s girl,” apparently rescued the woman from her cheating husband.
Not everyone was impressed: Created by TikToker Tamika Turner “Your addiction to surveillance and attention betrays the fact that even though you have the right demographic to call yourself a ‘girl’s girl,’ your only allegiance is to your own entertainment,” a video says, pointing to the massive personal impact it has. May be on someone who never caught the public eye.
The hunger for candid announcements about other people’s marriages and relationships is so insatiable that Dustin Poynter makes his living making them. Also known as the “Red Flag Guy,” Poynter has spent the past year reposting videos of couples in a relationship on TikTok and Instagram, along with videos of them holding (or sometimes walking with) a giant red or green flag. A green flag communicates that partners are behaving well, such as surprising their significant other with a gift, while a red flag indicates destruction (eg, say, when a partner Works like crazy during a gender reveal). The Arkansas-based 32-year-old has more than 4 million followers and earns a lucrative income through regular brand deals (she declined to reveal exactly how much, but said, “It’s changed my life, and I’m able to support my whole family. “).
As Poynter sifted through the many, many TikTok videos posted by couples hoping to go viral, I marveled at how many examples where human behavior can’t be boiled down to a single color. What about “beige flags,” as they’re called online, the kinds that don’t really fit into the “good” or “bad” categories? “I think the red flags are not permanent,” Poynter said. “It takes the individual to admit it and want to change, but I believe people can change. I’m not trying to tear anyone down here.”
Lover will not cut your fruit? Break up! Husband says don’t you do enough housework? Divorce him sister!
Poynter stresses that he is not an expert; He’s just an ordinary guy running through a public park with a flag who stumbles upon an eccentric niche that allows him to live the life he’s always dreamed of. But its — which is to say, the entire Internet — brand advocacy and ethics policing is remarkably black-and-white. Apparently, this is why the TikTok trend and Reddit’s “Am I an ass?” The forum is so popular. They allow us to fit complex situations into neat and comfortable boxes. Lover will not cut your fruit? Break up! Husband says don’t you do enough housework? Divorce him sister!
Taken together, the comments are almost like the next wave of girlboss Lean in Feminism, where instead of being treated like men in professional settings, women see men as a source of frustration, treating them the way patriarchy has treated women for eternity. while practicing”decentering” men While one’s life may be extremely positive for many women, the idea that all men are trash hurts people of all genders. Similarly, the assumption is that all heterosexual marriages are (or should be) irrevocably doomed. The Atlantic’s Lily Mayer notedA failure of imagination, a failure to imagine a better world where two people who clearly love each other can form an equal and mutually positive relationship.
Expecting subtlety from a TikTok comment (character limit: 150) is an exercise in futility. The world would probably be a simpler place if the future could be determined by an experiment that went viral on social media — if you could actually determine whether you should marry a man by bringing him an orange and, hopefully, waiting for him to peel it. . Marriage doesn’t work that way though. Because then, no one would have to get divorced in the first place.
