Her TikTok video about her date and the $3 cheese went viral. But the story was false.
Should you expect a date to pay $3 extra for the cheese on their burger? The question became a viral litmus test for unrealistic dating expectations after a recent TikTok video sent the internet into a raging frenzy, over a story that wasn’t even real.
New York City resident Dafna Diamant took to TikTok last week to vent about a first date, telling the camera she paid the bill and walked out after her date allegedly complained about the $3 surcharge for the adding cheese to his burger.
“I texted him, ‘The check cleared, you should have gotten the cheese,'” Diamant said in the video. “And I blocked it.”
The video, which hit more than 6 million views in just a couple of days, has sparked heated debates all over social media about whether it’s a red flag to save a few bucks for an addition to your meal — or rather, if L Diamant’s appointment dodged a bullet and made the right financial move.
As viewers gravitated towards the latter position, opinions began to pour in.
“Even I wouldn’t pay $3 for cheese lol,” read a comment that garnered more than 150,000 likes.
“Bro is financially literate,” read another with nearly 95,000 likes.
But the story that’s now circulating the internet wasn’t actually what happened. Diamant’s date didn’t refuse cheese, he said, nor did she go out and block him.
Instead, the couple overheard a man at another table asking a waitress about the price for adding cheese to her burger, then refusing it after hearing it would cost $3. The interaction sparked a conversation between the two about what any of them would have done in that situation.
“If I’m sitting on an appointment with a person and I feel like they’re saving something that will make their meal more enjoyable, they’ll continue to save on the rest of our appointments,” Diamant told NBC News. “It’s not about the cheese. It’s all about going to a restaurant and having fun with your date.
Diamant said she shared with her date why a negative response to the price increase would upset her and that her date agreed with her perspective. That discussion, she said, spawned the idea for the subsequent TikTok video, in which he claimed his date was on board from the start.
What they didn’t expect, however, was that what they thought was going to be a silly video would explode into a passionate talk about dating expectations. Diamant said all the attention from her was a little overwhelming, especially after reading comments calling her “crazy” or stating that she “is going to die on her own.” She tries not to watch the dots in her video of her.
It’s not about the cheese. It’s all about going to a restaurant and having fun with your date
-TikTok creator Dafna Diamant
However, he said, he aims to see the situation through a facetious lens.
“Even he thinks it’s funny. And we’ve only had one date, so he’s in no way obligated to me, but he’s checking to see if I’m okay,” she said. “And I try not to take it personally, because it didn’t really happen.”
In the days following Diamant’s TikTok, a creator who implied that he was Diamant’s date that night received 7 million views on his video, surpassing even the original. He wrote in a comment that he dodged “Not a bullet, a nuclear attack.”
Diamant, who confirmed this creator wasn’t her date, said it’s funny to see how easily people believe fake stories online. He said this willingness to embrace speculation, coupled with many viewers’ strong interest in dating stories, makes it easy for conversations about controversies like this to become increasingly sensational.
“It seems people who had an opinion against me get affirmation that they are right, so they continued the conversation and commented on the videos as well [on my page] which have no relation to history,” he said. “If you weren’t someone with enough self-confidence, some of these comments can really drive someone to do crazy things. So I hope people find something better to do than comment mean things on someone’s videos and photos.”
As for the identity of her real date, she said she prefers it to remain private. In a separate TikTok video, he said the two are planning a second date.