• Cassidy Joy Watson went on a romantic getaway with her ex-boyfriend four days after they broke up.

• Watson told Insider she’d already signed a contract to film it for TikTok, so they “went for it.”

• But going viral for posting about a breakup led to a wave of followers weighing in on her personal life.

Four days after ending a three-year relationship, 24-year-old Cassidy Joy Watson found herself at a romantic resort eating a forkful of fluffy pancakes. She was sitting opposite “the most stunning” views of Waikiki that she, a lifelong Hawaii resident, had ever seen, and diagonal from her now-ex, Jake White. It was the first day of a three-day staycation.

Watson, a TikTok creator with about 380,000 followers at the time, told Insider she had already signed a contract to create content for the Twin Fin Hotel resort where they were staying. (A representative for the agency representing the hotel confirmed the partnership in an email statement to Insider.) White — her long-time plus-one and, after much practice, her best content creation partner — had agreed with her that it was best they not rock the boat with last-minute changes.

Couple content on TikTok is hugely popular. As Watson put it to Insider, “people love to see people in love.” But making your relationship publicly available puts “a lot of eyes” on it, and that attention comes with pitfalls. When you end said public relationship, you may feel — or be, by invested viewers — compelled to share the details of your own gruesome heartbreak publicly, too. For Watson, this led to a wave of virality she never expected.

Eventually, Watson deactivated her TikTok account and retreated further from the magnifying glass of public life. (Her Instagram account, while public, is markedly more distanced than the once-casual candor of Watson’s TikTok). However, while Watson has since opted out of TikTok, completely deactivating her account, stitches and screen recordings of her breakup explanation and staycation videos remain online.

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She declined to comment on the reasons behind her sudden disappearance from the app, but did share with Insider the backstory behind her viral moment, which took her by surprise — and led to some unforeseen consequences.

Watson’s TikTok about the couple’s unusual circumstances wasn’t intended to go viral

Watson and White embarked on a sardonic relationship-post-mortem staycation at the time — a plot rarely seen outside of the rom-com genre — alongside other coupled influencers and honeymooners.

Their hotel room had separate beds — by luck, rather than by design, Watson told Insider — and the pair ate at romantic, dimly lit dinners, enjoyed “glorious platonic sunsets,” and splashed around pristine blue waters. White filmed picturesque, aspirational content: Watson reclining on a poolside cabana in a swimsuit and sipping from a branded mug in bed.

“When you and your boyfriend of three years break up but you already signed a contract to create content at a resort together,” Watson’s on-screen text read over a December 13 sizzle reel of tropical vistas and cute-couple content set to a sped-up version of SZA’s “Kill Bill.”

Initially, Watson said, the video was meant mainly for her friends. But it blew up, eventually garnering more than 5.8 million views.

As a viewer herself, Watson knew the value of sharing a breakup story

After going viral, Watson followed up with another ironic TikTok montage on December 15.

“Unlike my ex,” Watson said in a voiceover, “the hotel really went out of their way to make me feel special … the best part of this trip was definitely the breakfast at their coconut Club Lounge. They had delicious food and, much like the turn my relationship took, a full 180-degree view of Waikiki.”

“I spent most of this vacation just taking in these breathtaking views,” Watson continued, “and exercising self-control to not throw my ex off the balcony.”

At the time, Watson told Insider she felt frustrated by internet couples who publicly post their relationships but don’t ultimately share public explanations of why they broke up. “I’m nosy,” she explained. In avoidance of her own pet peeve, Watson had initially “wanted to give a more real, raw explanation.”

And after many messages from viewers telling her she had a “perfect” relationship they wanted to emulate, she said she felt compelled to set the record straight.

“All the cute stuff that you see in videos, they’re really just snippets of our relationship, and, at the end of the day, we’re both adults and we’re communicative with each other, and I don’t mind sharing the messy parts of my life online too,” Watson said.

Watson said her ex doesn’t have a big social media footprint of his own, but he had become a consistent feature of her content. So much so that she addressed their breakup in a TikTok on December 14, suggesting the relationship ended after an attempt at nonmonogamy.

As an invested viewer of other highly visible online couples, Watson could relate, at the time, to those who felt invested in the parasocial reality of her own life.

Watson’s relationship had first gone viral for a TikTok “highlight reel” of clips of the couple’s relationship set to the Coldplay song “Yellow.” She said she received an influx of messages from strangers like “you’re living my dream” and “this is what I want in a relationship.” And, in the end, it also felt important and relevant to update those viewers that a relationship could look that way and still end.

“Those big gestures and those things that you see on the internet — it doesn’t necessarily mean that a relationship is going to work out forever,” she said.

The pair learned a public breakup can lead to a harsh or overly simplistic response

When her TikTok about the breakup gained traction (it was viewed more than 3.5 million times before her account was deleted) she said she told White it was “getting crazy,” and read some of the comments to him, noting that she “tried to filter out the really gnarly ones.” Eventually, she said, White started fielding personal calls from friends and family who’d learned, via TikTok, of the breakup.

En masse, Watson said, commenters seemed to jump to take her side — “I had to delete so many comments because they were absolutely attacking my ex.”

In the weeks after the video went viral, Watson responded to comments, putting rumors that it was a ploy for views to rest and explaining why comments like “‘girl, you need to move out,” oversimplified her situation.

“The housing market in Hawaii is very difficult,” she told Insider at the time. “I’m trying to find a viable place to rent. It might take a little longer than I’d like.” Ultimately, Watson didn’t want to be bumping shoulders with her ex in the kitchen — and the crush of viewers were liable to strip such nuance out of her real-life experience.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and Watson’s TikTok account no longer exists. Where there was once a direct line between Watson and hundreds of thousands of followers — full of sun-bleached Hawaii content, day-in-the-life vlogs, and the gift of a mini-putt golf course her now-ex set up in her living room — there’s now an “error” page.

But, as Watson and many others have learned on social media, while you may be able to control the content you post, you can’t control the response. Watson could leave the app, but her breakup remains immortalized on the internet forever — a price that may not be worth paying in order to satisfy the curiosity of followers.

Read the original article on Insider