The kinds of posts from r/AmITheAsshole that make the jump to Twitter often have a clear victor, but a recent post about a birthday cake has the internet more divided than ever.
Last week, u/Throwaway5829582999 took to r/AITAH (a subreddit that operates similarly to its much more popular sibling but has fewer rules about what can be submitted) to write about a situation about him and his girlfriend—and the cake she made for his birthday.
He asked his girlfriend, who he says is a “great baker,” for a chocolate cake with chocolate icing for his birthday. Although she made him a chocolate cake with chocolate icing on top, it included a thin layer of vanilla icing between two layers of chocolate cake. He says that while he liked the cake, he didn’t get the cake he wanted because of that strip of vanilla frosting in the middle.
“I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t pout,” he wrote. “I even ate half of a slice–the chocolate part. She got upset with me and said, ‘But I’ve made vanilla cake before, and you liked it.’ I pointed out that I don’t mind vanilla icing, but **it’s not what I wanted for my birthday**.”
According to u/Throwaway5829582999, his girlfriend told him she wouldn’t make him a cake next year and didn’t appreciate his response that he’d get his own cake instead.
The poster didn’t provide additional information or context to the situation in the comments, although he noted his friends think he was in the wrong for hurting his girlfriend’s feelings and should’ve been grateful that she even made him a cake.
Apart from the usual caveats around the post’s validity, the overarching reaction to it depended on where you viewed it. On Reddit, the poster was largely deemed the asshole who should’ve appreciated what his girlfriend made him. If anything, they argued, he should grow up.
“YTA. Not necessarily for saying the cake wasn’t what you wanted, although I would have kept my mouth shut, but for the way you spoke to her,” Straight_Career6856 wrote. “It’s so incredibly rude and disrespectful. ‘If I wanted vanilla in a cake, I would have asked for vanilla in a cake’ and ‘I’ll order my own and get my money back if they don’t do it like I want it??? That’s insane.”
On Twitter, the account AskAubry, which curates posts from places like AITA for people’s consumption, took the girlfriend’s side, noting, “Oh hell no. I hope she never responds.”
But as AskAubry’s post went viral, more people started to take the side of the man who took issue with his girlfriend’s cake. Now, she was “being a baby” and was in the wrong for not making him the cake he wanted, while some suggested more people would be on the poster’s side if the genders were reversed (e.g., a man didn’t make the cake his girlfriend wanted).
“She literally made him leave his OWN BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS and y’all are on HER SIDE????” @NAMJINMIN wrote.
It’s a classic case of engagement bait. While many viral AITA posts have a clear villain from the get-go—ranging from the poster or people involved in the story being rude to a downright sociopath—this one doesn’t. With a piece of cake at its core, its stakes are minimal. Even if the post is fake, it’s a minor enough quandary to annoy people anyway. It’s a deeply unserious disagreement and petty enough for everyone to get overly annoyed and shout at internet strangers. And in the end, nobody is satisfied with any kind of victor in the court of public opinion.
It’s about a cake, but it’s also about more than just a cake.
Even the update from the original poster doesn’t offer a clear winner. He says he apologized but thinks he’s owed the same thing. As of the last update, she hasn’t responded.
“After looking at the comments, I’ve apologized to my girlfriend for being the partial asshole but also asked her for an apology as well because it looked like the results were about 50/50 on whether I was or wasn’t, at least when I skimmed them,” he wrote in an update posted sometime after Saturday night.
“She hasn’t replied yet, but I assume I’ll hear from her today. She is probably just thinking about how she can best apologize to me.”
