TikTok/Lee Sam Teesa
“Hello, welcome. We all know why you’re here.”
With those nine words, TikTok user @ReesaMTeesa turned her storytime about meeting, dating, and divorcing a man she called a “pathological liar” into TikTok’s newest hit reality series. The show is called “Who TF Did I Marry,” and it’s essentially an Atlanta-based woman recounting her experiences with her ex-husband in 10-minute increments while getting her hair done and driving to work. Nevertheless, TikTok users have already declared the series. It was a classic and demanded the Hollywood treatment. (Lisa didn’t reply) rolling stonerequest for comments. ) Since her first video was released on February 14th, it has averaged at least 1 million views per video, and knowing that Leesa tells the story in 50 parts , which makes her feat even more impressive. But this story also poses a larger problem, as personal stories continue to dominate online conversations. Once a story is published, who decides what happens next?
Even though eight hours of content about the story have already been released around the world, viewers are asking for more details. Her story begins in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she met a man she calls “Legion” on a Facebook dating app. (Lisa did not reveal her ex-husband’s legal name or other personal information to protect his identity, but did choose the pseudonym Legion, after the Biblical story of a man possessed by a group of evil spirits.) ) According to Leesa, Legion told her that he had recently moved to Atlanta from California after a divorce and was working as a vice president at an unnamed seasoning company. The two moved in together soon after they started dating, and Legion paid most of the bills. He showed up to work on time and spoke on the phone for several hours each day with family members and people he claimed to be employees.
Leesa describes her initial relationship with Legion as good, but says red flags started appearing when the two tried to buy a house together. The first attempt completely failed, and on the second attempt, the seller aborted the transaction after Legion was unable to provide proof of his financial account. In July 2020, Legion was traveling frequently for work and was unable to be there for Leesa during a difficult time, including her miscarriage. Despite their problems, the two got married in 2021.
However, Leesa’s application for a new job completely throws Leesa’s trust in the Legion into turmoil. During a routine background check on herself and her husband, Leesa noticed that the Social Security number her husband gave her did not match the number listed on her marriage license. . As she dug further, the truth came out. Everything Leesa discovered was a lie. She did not live in California. He was married multiple times. His family never spoke to him, and his job was as a temporary forklift driver, not vice president of a condiment company. In fact, he let her in on her lies and was telling people that she gave birth to her child until her birth and that they now had a son together. Less than five months after their marriage, Leesa and Legion divorced. “Her cruelty towards her ex-husband was on a level I had never experienced before,” Leesa said in part 50 of her story. “And God knows I pray I never have to go through that again.”
It seems strange that millions of TikTok users watch nearly eight hours of videos, one after the other, but this phenomenon is not unique. His Twitter thread about his wild two-day trip to Florida with a former Hooters waitress that went viral in 2015 is a 147-part story that became a cult favorite and was published by A24 It was adapted and its opening sentence was created. As for why me and this bitch had a falling out? ? ? ? ? ” — in a meme. And that particular storytime didn’t just go viral, it generated a full-fledged following. In August 2023, influencer Morgan Bailey gained nearly 1 million followers in two weeks after she started making videos about the man who broke up with her 30 days after her daughter was born. She called him “a random guy from Atlanta,” and just talking about their interaction helped her number of followers grow to 1.3 million. In recent news, TikToker Maddie Hart has been in the news for sharing a story about a time when her father allegedly abandoned his family to become a breakdancer. The story, which has been viewed more than 5.4 million times on TikTok, became so big that his father revealed in his own response that he is a “Yuge fan” of Elon Musk and the Bitcoin-only breakdancer. . (Musk himself responded to the video saying, “You’re amazing.”)
But as personal storytimes become more popular and wilder, problems emerge. When does a viewer go from being a viewer to being an active participant? And is that what anyone wants? Although Leesa thanked those who watched her video, most of her subsequent live shows revolved around numerous people desperately trying to expose Legion’s real name and public information, with Leesa actively is actually preventing it. She told her own story to the internet. Now people feel it’s their job to keep it going.
“If you want to know who he is, you know,” Leesa said in a follow-up post. “But he shouldn’t get engaged because the engagement can be hostile and this person’s health is not good. So he should definitely not do it.”
