- Craig Moffat blew up on TikTok in 2021 when he shared a sad story about a dating disaster.
- The video went mega viral with 17.8 million views and over 44,000 comforting comments.
- Two years later, he admitted he’d faked the whole thing out of boredom.
In June 2021, Craig Moffat, who is now 23 years old and based in Aberdeen, Scotland, posted a TikTok that appeared to show him catching multiple trains alongside on-screen captions that said he was “finally going on a date after 2 years of being single” and he was “so excited.”
Moffat filmed himself alone at a restaurant and suggested the date was a no-show. The video concluded with his perspective back on the train platform with the captions, “I guess I’ll just head home” and “I was really looking forward for tonight.”
“Maybe it’s not time to get back out there just yet,” Moffat wrote in the caption alongside the video, and included the hashtags #heartbroken and #allwomenarethesame.
The video went mega-viral, receiving 17.8 million views and over 44,000 comments, many of which comforted Moffat. They wrote that he had “dodged a bullet” if his date was too rude to turn up, that the other person clearly didn’t deserve him, and told him not to give up on the dating scene.
“Thank you everyone. I didn’t expect to get this much of a response! I really appreciate all the kind words,” Moffat wrote beneath his video alongside a heart emoji, in a comment that received over 3,980 likes, as viewers continued to respond with kind, encouraging, and supportive words.
However, this week, over two years after Moffat posted his viral video, the TikToker shared a follow-up to the saga with the caption, “The truth is out.”
Moffat revealed there was no date and he’d faked the whole thing
In his latest upload, posted on September 14, Moffat shared clips from his original date video, with a new on-screen caption that read, “Creating a fake TikTok pretending to get stood up on a date cause I was bored,” which then cut to a close-up of the staggering number of views his initial upload had received.
Moffat told Insider he was supposed to be traveling with friends that day, but his pals had all missed the train which left him in the carriage alone. He started filming the trip as a way to test out the camera on his new phone. When he took himself out to get food, he had the idea for the video.
“I was eating dinner and had the most random thought that I should make them all into a TikTok and pretend to get stood up,” he told Insider.Â
He went back to his hotel, edited the clips together, and uploaded the video, before meeting with his friends who had eventually arrived after catching a later train.
Videos that show people appearing to be stood up on dates regularly resonate with viewers on TikTok. In February, thousands of comments rallied around an 89-year-old man who said he’d been stood up during his first dinner date in 30 years, and in July a TikToker who goes by @jonathandoescomedy received over 243,000 views and a similar display of support when he said he’d waited 30 minutes for a date who didn’t turn up.
Moffat’s was no exception. He recalls the TikTok having less than 100 views the night he posted it, but when he checked back a few days later, it had over 2 million.
“Honestly it was so overwhelming,” Moffat told Insider. “I felt so bad about the whole situation.”
But he was also curious to see how viral it could go, so he left the video up, and watched as it continued to rack up millions upon millions of views. He said his TikTok account grew from 3,000 followers to over 90,000 as a direct result of the viral video.
“It was truly amazing how I went from being a nobody to having tens of thousands of folk messaging me,” he said. “It was actually really nice to see all the messages from everyone saying so many nice things.”
Moffat’s admission received a mixed response
Despite sharing multiple videos with over 500,000 views each, and another in the millions, Moffat told Insider “social media isn’t really my thing” and said he only posts “from time to time.” When asked about his occupation, Moffat declined to disclose this information, but said it afforded him a “lavish lifestyle.”
Moffat told Insider he decided to reveal the truth all these years later because he was “hoping all the hype about it would have been over” but his latest video quickly received over 56,000 views.
It received a mixed response, as some blasted him for being “sad” and a “LIAR” while others appeared to find it quite funny, or speculated the new video was actually the fake one. But Moffat is fine with having some detractors.Â
“I wasn’t really concerned about what people would comment. Stuff like that doesn’t really phase me,” he said.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here.