Main Character of the Week is a weekly column that tells you the most prominent “main character” online (good or bad). It runs on Fridays in the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter. If you want to get this column a day before we publish it, subscribe to web_crawlr, where you’ll get the daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
The internet is a stage, and someone unwillingly stumbles onto it weekly. This makes them the “main character” online. Sometimes their story is heartwarming, like the worker in an open-desk setting who was sent home for sleeping on the job but actually was thinking through a tricky problem; usually it’s a gaffe. In any case, that main character energy flows through the news cycle and turbo-charges debate for several business days.
Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week.
It’s 48 oysters girl.
Sometimes a man asks you out so much that you get him back for the audacity to not take no for an answer. So you go on a date and order a lot of food as getback.
But sometimes this guy gets the hint that his long-awaited date is actually a troll job… after you’ve slurped 48 oysters and ordered lemon drops. So he gets up to use the bathroom and leaves you with the tab.
And the decorum violations relative to who was in the wrong here ignite a firestorm of cross-platform conversation.
The saga began on TikTok. No, it began at Fontaines in Atlanta, which as Senior Editor David Covucci notes, bills itself as the freshest place to get oysters in the metro area:
According to the video, @equanaaa went to Fontaine’s because a man had been repeatedly pestering her about going out and she finally had no plans one day. So she suggested the oyster spot because she could at least get some content out of it… She proceeds to film the dozen oysters she gets to eat, adding Tabasco and lemon, before very audibly slurping them down on camera.
Then she ordered another platter. Then another. Then another. All told she consumed 48 oysters.
“I had to,” she said. “It was so good.”
She ordered crab cakes afterward. But then her date disappeared for 30 minutes before she realized she’d been had. It was a $184 tab, which the man later said he’d CashApp her for his share of the tab. (Drinks.)
The sendup was viral catnip, and as Covucci noted:
Most viewers sided with her date though, citing her large order and filming herself loudly eating it.
“I’m in here hollering bc you was slurping up them oysters and that man was plotting his escape,” said one.
I have sympathy for the subject of the video.
She was called out for only leaving $11 as a tip. She says in a follow-up video that she left $11 in cash plus $15 on her card. The facts matter.
And recently this week, she went to Decatur, Georgia for crawfish and the workers knew all about her saga, cracking jokes at her expense. I think it’s a harmless misunderstanding that reasonable minds can disagree over and I think stereotypes about gold diggers and the internet’s general disdain for women boosted the story’s punchline.
Ultimately: It’s OK to expect the princess treatment from a man who won’t stop promising it via his advances.
