My daughter sprinted into the living room:

OMG! A and L made a tik tok that went viral

To answer the two questions that you may have:

  1. TikTok is “a massively popular app that lets users create and share videos up to 60 seconds long” informal definition according to dictionary.com
  2. A and L are the daughters of my brother in law’s (via my sister in law) cousin. We have met them on many occasions over the past twenty years

Now to the story:

The Grandfather of A&L left the girls a text. In it he extolled the virtues of the Grandson of one of his friends from the country club. He told the girls where the guy worked and what he did, who the family was, and what he looked like. He told the twins that as the guy lived in NYC one, or both of them should text him.

With me so far?

The twins then decided to text this guy while filming it for a TikTok. The video went something like this:

Hey- do you know that your Grandfather is pimping you out?

There was a little more to their words but this was the gist of the video, and I believe the line that made people laugh and cringe at the same time, thus ensuring its viralness…

We can think about this on a variety of levels:

  1. Should relatives be trying to set you up on dates if you haven’t explicitly asked?
  2. Were the twins right to call out their Grandfather like this, on a public forum?
  3. Was it fair to call out the guy on a video, seeing that he had absolutely no part in this and can’t control the actions of his relative?
  4. Is it OK because I’ve met the Grandfather and let’s say he could be a tad…pompous?

What do you think?

Would you be trying to get your Grandkids married off? Would you retaliate if someone tried to set you up?

Discuss:

76 thoughts on “Tick Tick”

  3. I think online it’s better to be vague about who is doing something you don’t like rather than specifically calling out someone. Therefore I think the TikTok video was a bad idea. Too much hurt can come from it.

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    1. I debated on this one, cause if someone did this to me I’d clearly blog about it. However, I don’t know if I like the idea of videoing the text to the guy who is clueless. But I figured I’d ask the room

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      1. It’s a gray area to be sure. What about libel and slander laws? I don’t know how those work for TikTok but there could be repercussions from posting something so specific, maybe?

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Seems like the grandpa’s need to take a step or two back I think and come to the realization that it’s not their job to arrange relationships. I do love the way the girls handled it though! Sort of 2021 versions of Rory Gilmore.

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  6. Totally uncomfortable and inappropriate. My daughter was told to contact a guy my stepdad knew in the city where she lived. What ensued was a super awkward back and forth..obviously both parties feeling pressured to get together..ugh. Just leave it alone is my motto.

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      1. As the mom..I felt bad for my daughter..it was just dumb..I’m sure my step dad meant well..my daughter was new in the city and all..but it was just one more thing on her to-do list.. just dumb and uncomfortable.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Grandpa stepped in it. It is funny reading it from where I sit, but I would feel bad for the young man. Hard enough navigating the relationship stuff these days. Is there anyway someone could figure out who he is from that clip?

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    1. I don’t think so. You don’t see him, his name, his number or hear him. You just know what club his grandfather belongs to and where he works, but as it’s the same company my husband works for and they’re I believe one of the top ten employers in nyc, I doubt they would figure it out

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      1. Grandfather wanted to set up granddaughters with the grandson of someone he knew. Girls not happy with interference. They decided it would be funny to sort of publicly shame him

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    2. I hate interfering grandparents. My guess is they got fed up because they both graduated college last year and neither is dating and it probably on some level annoys the gp’s (I have a guess as to the why but that’s something I won’t talk about here) and this was probably the only way the gps would stop trying to set them up

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  11. There is a whole lot wrong on all sides of this thing. I don’t entirely see the harm in mentioning one single person to another single person, but the fact that it was suggested that they text this person, meaning the grandfather had also given out personal contact information, was really wrong if the person in question hadn’t agreed to having that information given. Then to have the girls do so on video, whether there was any identifying information or not, was also wrong. Just because a stranger may not have been able to identify the person, doesn’t mean that someone they know wouldn’t be able to identify them. It could have still lead to a potentially embarrassing situation or even something more problematic depending on the circumstances of the call. This may have ended on a mostly harmless level, but there was no way to know that going into it.

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    1. I agree. I laughed when I heard it, but more because I knew most of the players, and I sort of understand why the girls did it. I didn’t like involving the poor guy who knew nothing about any of this. This is how kids think nowadays though. I only know about this because of personal relationship, but I’m guessing stuff like this happens all the time. I admit if this happened to me or my daughter I would blog about it (and I have when my in laws made comments about my daughter) and I did find it funny, but yeah…I had some issues too which is why I brought it to the table

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  13. Well, that’s pretty funny and I don’t think it’s that inappropriate. The guy may know his grandfather is like that anyway. Kids nowadays have different opinions about what is crossing the line and what is not. But it sounds to me like it was A & L’s grandfather who was doing the pimping, not the guy’s.

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  14. As one who has a deep dislike for Tick Tock, I wonder if today’s society is okay with an anything-goes mentality for what is posted on social media. Amusing? Yes. Could it have gone sideways? Absolutely!

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  15. Oh my. Hmmm. Let’s see. No, I would not try to marry off my kids or grandkids. Not my place. And, no, I would not take revenge. Though I would have a conversation with them that might be somewhat uncomfortable…for them, that is.

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  16. It’s a new iteration in an old story. Matchmaking with unwilling or unwitting participants. Grandpa may have had his heart in the right place, but went about it all wrong. Does that warrant shaming on Tik Tok? As long as he’s not identifiable, absolutely!

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  17. On social media, everything is fair game . . even if it ain’t fair to all the players. This kid didn’t ask nor want the pub, so no . . I ain’t digging that. Maybe if the girls had given him a heads up beforehand it would’ve been cool. But here’s the thing. Who’s to say the kid doesn’t have a girlfriend? And who’s to say said girlfriend wouldn’t like the idea that a couple chicas are shouting out to him?

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  18. I think it was a pretty unkind thing to do to be honest. I’m sure they never intended to be unkind, but… thoughtless acts can be hurtful & that’s hopefully something they now realise. It’s unfortunate how social media can be used in this way. I remember calling a young woman I knew who posted the result of a friend’s pregnancy test on Facebook, tagging a guy. She felt upset for her friend, but when I challenged her, admitted she actually had no way of knowing whether he was in any way involved or not. She did delete it, but so many people had already seen it by then, damage had been done. She took it on the chin as a lesson and apologised to the guy which I was proud of her for doing.

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      1. On reading your clarification in the comments, I can see that he wasn’t identified. It is an amusing line, but I do wonder why they didn’t contact the boy saying their grandfather was pimping them out, which was actually accurate. By transferring their grandfather’s action onto the grandfather of the boy, their act was unkind rather than witty.

        Liked by 1 person

  22. You say that Tik Tok is a video app. Is that meant to make things clearer? I vaguely know that video is something you look at and an app is something people keep trying to make me use…

    I’m not sure that I want to see other people’s lives in such detail. I’d ban that sort of thing if I ruled the world. It’s on my list between making clean drinking water available for all and banning those annoying electric scooters from footpaths.

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  23. I think the only wrong thing was that they made a tik tok without this guy’s consent. The grandfathers are outrageous. But I was set up with my husband (with my consent and foreknowledge) and we’ve been married 17 years. 😊 So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to set folks up (even your relatives) if they’re on board with it. The poor guy didn’t ask for it. He shouldn’t have been outed on tiktok.

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    1. Nothing wrong with matchmaking if there’s prior approval. I think the problem is when no ones asks if they want to be set up….or gives out phone numbers without asking. But yeah..I think there are issues. However, my 19 year old daughter saw nothing wrong with this, so there you go

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  24. Sometimes people just don’t feel like dating for various reasons, so I feel like setting people up is generally a bad idea, especially if the person hasn’t expressed any desire to change their singledom. On the other hand, simply mentioning one single person to another single person and leaving it in their hands is harmless 🤷🏽‍♀️

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  25. Since my mother shamelessly set me up with anyone who had been identified as an “eligible” male by anyone and everyone she knew plus a lot of people they knew as well, I never ever have and never ever would do this to any of the female members of my family. Even now, Mom still continues to try to do this to/for my daughter and other single females she knows and cares about to varying degrees. In her feeble and socially backward and old-fashioned mindset, she thinks she’s doing them a favor. No potential negative repercussions enter into her thinking: there could be a range of these, including but not limited to the very creative one you brought up, though some could be much worse and even dangerous at the very worst, considering Mom wouldn’t know most of these “eligible” males from Adam.

    I agree with the premises of many of the comments here. First, this whole remote matchmaking exercise might be OK if it was explicitly sanctioned by both parties who had also been forewarned and agreed to each and every “connection. Second, if the matchmaker has been specifically requested/ordered/warned to cease and desist but went ahead and did it anyway – I say they’ve made themselves fair game for retribution, which would hopefully always be as mild and humorous/light-hearted as this appears to have been. I do hope the recorders let the recorder know what they had done, even if it was after the fact. I suspect this may not have been the first time this poor guy had been the recipient of an unwanted intro to an “eligible” female, and in that case would probably not have been offended.

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    1. I don’t know if the family if the twins knew about what they did till my husband called his sister and told her. My understanding was they were not amused…😉

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