Don’t mess with a woman’s foodstagram, or you may just get your “just desserts” destroyed before your eyes. A video of what looks like a playful date night joke gone “smashingly” wrong has gone viral, with some shedding light on darker connections to abuse it may or may not be associated with.
The video, set to the sounds of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl,” shows a young woman setting up to take a photo of a piece of cake at a nice restaurant. Before she can get the photo, a faceless interloper takes their knife and starts cutting up the slice, effectively ruining the shot.
As revenge, the young woman smashes the cake of her dining partner with the palm of her hand, destroying the entire piece into a sugary pile of mush. Her expression is cold and unfeeling as she turns up her palm, now covered in cream, so her partner understands what happens when you mess with getting content for the ‘gram.
What really happened in the viral cake smash video?
The original video was posted by TikTok user @aylinannaka on Jan 3., 2025. In her caption, she writes, “And then my ring disappeared from my finger,” (translated from Ukrainian). The video has gone viral on TikTok, amassing over 120.6M views, 82.8K comments, and 318.6K shares.
@aylinannaka А потом мое кольцо исчезло с пальца
♬ Just A Girl – No Doubt
It’s unclear who exactly was involved in the original video, but @aylinannaka has since produced several follow-up cake destruction posts, including one that was staged in the same restaurant, with the same cake, but showing her boyfriend in the shot.
The rest of her content feels like the Ukrainian version of Mean Girls – makeup and skincare jokes, driving around in expensive cars, and lots of pink.
Although her Instagram profile says she’s “Just chill Ukrainian girl,” her reputation as someone to be both feared and idolized is apparent across the internet.
Does the video show an abusive relationship?
Reposted by @HumansNoContext on Jan 11., 2025, beneath the caption “Have you ever noticed that women always escalate their reactions x100?” the video sparked debate surrounding abusive behavior on a viral X thread from user @Richard_Vixen, who considers herself a “Radical advocate for women” according to her profile. She re-reposted the video to exemplify what she thought was a situation related to reactive abuse.
“Reactive abuse can often look like this,” her tweet begins. She explains how the actions of the young woman in the video are “more ‘extreme’” than her partner’s, however she also gives reason to suggest they were justified.
“Her action is provoked, his is unprovoked and something *he has no reason to do,*” she adds. “It’s the “not the WORST behavior, but something no reasonable person would ever do” that sneakily provokes understandable confusion and anger, then the actor slinks back to this defense of “what I did wasn’t SO bad.” It was because it was designed to provoke.”
The X thread goes on to explain further the way the abuse may be considered a gray area for some. “She didn’t ‘escalate’ by not doing tit for tat with someone whose only possible motivation was to upset her,” she goes on. “She actually COULDN’T — cutting up his cake in the same way would not have the same effect. She’d protesting.”
“The reactive abuse strategy is also to chip away at someone’s sanity over time,” she further explains. ‘“Small’ transgression followed by gaslighting ‘what did I do?’ over & over until the person snaps, then suddenly the spotlight goes to them – ‘you’re crazy!! That was such an over reaction!’”
Folks in the comments section of the original TikTok had similar sentiments.
“She was setting boundaries” wrote one user. “That’s a very appropriate response,” wrote another, with others chiming in writing “Valid asf” and “the only appropriate response.”
With over 1.3K reshares, 12K likes and 110 comments, others responded with their own thoughts to @Richard_Vixen’s observations.
X user @whenwehaveeyes responded, “She wants her point to be crystal clear. What he did was not good natured, and she is telling him not to again.”
“I lived in a household where me and my mom lived with a man who knew exactly what would cause us to react and get upset, he would do those things with a smirk on his face, he would laugh when we reacted alone with him, he would play the victim card when we had guests,” replied X user @CelesteLaverty.
Others thought the video was more of an act than an actual recording of abuse
“Why is this getting recorded?”X user @lurkerdoggo_ asked. “Something in me is telling me that this either happens very often or is staged.”
X user @Eli_B_Again also pointed out that “She’s smirking at the end. I think they’re playing around,” and that the offender may not even be her boyfriend, but a female, based on the way the nails and clothing look.
@Richard_Vixen muted the thread after speculating that the event may have occurred between two women, but that her initial reaction had been based on other comments framing the situation as “‘women are crazy; HE did nothing wrong.’”
“The dynamic im describing is still very real & ignored so I will leave this up,” she adds.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
