If a stranger sends you a flirty message on Instagram, be careful, says Jessica Lucas in Input Mag. They could be a “loyalty tester” in disguise. For the uninitiated, loyalty testers are (mostly) women who get paid by other women to flirtily message their unsuspecting boyfriends. The idea is to see whether or not the boyfriends flirt back. Some men pass the test. Most fail.
It sounds mad, but it’s big business on TikTok, where professional loyalty testers upload videos of their detective work. Particularly juicy exchanges can rack up millions of views each. In total, videos with the hashtag #loyaltytest have been watched more than 700 million times. “It’s not ethical,” says Tara Blair Ball, a relationship coach. But the trend could have some benefits. As loyalty testers become more mainstream, she says, “I’d imagine that people will be more careful about responding to the messages of strangers”.