Many people have experienced a bad date. But it’s not every day that someone reveals the intimate details of their bad date online – down to the restaurant choice of their prospective date – gaining an audience of millions. For one woman, that happened when she stopped at The Cheesecake Factory for a first date.
Yes, the popular restaurant chain, famous for its Biblical menu, is going viral for reasons that probably put the marketing department to sleep. A TikTok of a woman refusing to leave a car for a date at The Cheesecake Factory has been making the rounds on social media platforms over the past week.
The TikTok in question, posted by a woman speaking directly into a camera, went into detail about how this was apparently a major violation.
“Who would take someone who looks like that to a chain restaurant?” she said in the video. “Look at me: I can’t go to Cheesecake Factory. I’m dying.”
The whole thing has since taken on a life of its own. So much so that the original TikTok isn’t even the topic in question anymore. The video lasts just over six minutes and shows the woman dressing her potential suitor outside The Cheesecake Factory. He also poked her back for being late, and then they went back and forth, arguing in the front seats of a car. And it’s not without reason that TikToks like this are often staged and played for the camera because… well, duh… people want attention.
When it came to attention, it worked. Millions of people watched the interaction. The response was largely in defense of the man and The Cheesecake Factory. Typical comments included: “What’s wrong with the cheesecake factory” to “he seems so nice, I would have been so hyped for the cheesecake factory,” and “I love the Cheesecake Factory….Girl, bye…. He dodged a bullet…played perfectly.”
Then of course the online world started having a discourse because that’s what people do online. For example, a list of 28 places where you can’t have a date went viral. Twenty-eight places! (What’s left?) Things just escalated from there.
Stephen A. Smith, head of popular sports, ranted about it. TL;DR: “There’s nothing wrong with the Cheesecake Factory.” The damn Display had a segment on it. Brands posted about it, including The Cheesecake Factory itself.
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In some ways, you start to feel sorry for the woman who posted the original TikTok. Was it seedy, overdone and somewhat unnecessary? Yes of course. However, she had no way of knowing that this would be the case so big of an agreement. But in our culture where everyone has to post about going to the viral new place, perhaps the relatively bland reliability of The Cheesecake Factory feeling as an insult. It doesn’t matter that the restaurant itself estimates that the average guest spends about $30, which isn’t the case That cheap. If you fancy a drink, dessert, and a tip of no less than 20 percent, the bill for a first date seems likely to be at least $100.
The jokes about the whole saga will keep coming for a while.
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First dates are hard. Choosing a restaurant is difficult even for couples who have been together for years, let alone two people who are just meeting.
It would be great to support local restaurants, but sometimes people want to play it safe with a restaurant with hundreds of options. There are worse things. And hey, at least the dessert will be good. That is, when you enter the restaurant from the parking lot.