This Plus-Sized Dating App Is Using ‘Saturday Night Live’ Alumna Aidy Brant in Their Ads
The marketing meeting for “Bustr — BBW Dating & Hookup App” would have made for a brilliant Saturday Night Live sketch — as will the inevitable courtroom scene when Aidy Bryant sues them to pieces.
The world of dating apps remains one of the few massively popular industries where celebrity endorsements are rare-to-nonexistent — for some reason, public figures don’t want the entire internet to know where they can sexually harass their favorite actress and guess her “two truths and a lie.” Instead, A-listers looking for low-stakes relationships and discreet hookups typically congregate on Raya, an exclusive, membership-based dating service with an emphasis on privacy. However, female stars’ natural aversion to marketing their sex life to the public hasn’t stopped one dating app from snagging a celebrity endorsement — even if it’s nonconsensual.
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A screenshot from the Bustr page on the App Store went viral on the Saturday Night Live subreddit for a familiar cameo in not one, but two “real” dating profiles — apparently, Bustr wants prospective users to think that Bryant isn’t a massively successful TV star, but actually a pair of twins named Cindy and Darcey.
Also worth noting, “Haley” is actually writer and comedian Lindy West, who wrote the book on which Bryant’s Lorne Michaels-produced Hulu series Shrill was based. West also served as both writer and executive producer on the project. Laughably, a dating app designed to attract plus-sized women and the men who want to date them didn’t think that filling three out of the four fake profiles in their ad with the star and creator of one of the most popular shows about plus-sized women would be a red flag for their target demographic.
Additionally, Bryant is, famously, happily married to fellow comedian Conner O’Malley, so the Bustr ad also implies that Bryant is masquerading as two different women on their app in search of infidelity. There are so many layers of awful in this screenshot that Bustr is actually making Tinder look like an attractive option.
