- An influencer went viral with a storytime about a hookup that ended with her being locked out of her own home.
- She said a locksmith eventually let her back into the apartment and charged her $860.
TikTok creator Talia Lichtstein has gone hugely viral with a nightmarish post-hookup story that resulted in her being locked out of her apartment with a cat and her date in the middle of the night.
Her storytime has racked up 8 million views in just two days, and it's left people utterly astounded. Lichtstein told Insider that her date, who's kept anonymous in the video, is aware their story has gone public and finds the entire ordeal "hysterical."
In the video, posted on Tuesday and which she said she took shortly after the incident, Lichstein declared that she has the worst hookup story to date.
"Oh, you think you have a bad hookup story? No, I just won that game five minutes ago," she said at the start of her video.
@talialichtstein 4am, a cat, a canadian, and a locksmith #storytime #in #nyc ♬ original sound - Talia Lichtstein
She said as she was saying goodbye to her date at 3 a.m., her friend's cat that she was helping take care of slipped out of her front door.
"I say, 'Grab the cat!'" she recalled. "The guy goes, 'I'm allergic.'"
So she proceeded to run out to grab her friend's cat. But when she did, the door closed behind her, leaving her, the cat, and her Canadian date locked outside. To make matters much worse, she said she was only in a towel, so she had to sit her bare body down on the cold steps of her stairway. Her keys, phone, and wallet were all locked inside her apartment.
Lichtstein told Insider that even as this nightmare was unfolding, she immediately knew she was going to make content about it.
"Every time something crazy happens, the silver lining is that I do see it as being, 'Oh, this is fodder for conversation online, this could be something entertaining'," she said.
Back at the scene of the crime, the two of them attempt to call several locksmiths using her date's phone, but they couldn't get a hold of one for about an hour. By a stroke of luck, Lichtstein ran into one of her neighbors that she knew. They let her into their apartment and gave her clothing, while the date remained downstairs waiting for a locksmith to arrive.
The locksmith eventually showed up and charged her about $860 for the service, she said, and she and the cat were let back into the apartment. (Her date promptly left since he was only in town for two days, she added.)
The video has both shocked and delighted viewers, who cannot believe these unfortunate events, but were enthralled by the way Lichtstein told the tale.
"The way my jaw dropped," one top comment with over 37,000 likes said. "You're the Carrie Bradshaw of our generation," another person wrote.
Many viewers also thought it was absurd the locksmith charged her $860 for the service.
Lichtstein told Insider that this was her first hookup that went so wrong she thought it would make a good story for TikTok. While she didn't anticipate the video going as viral as it has, she sensed that people would enjoy it.
"I wouldn't have risked putting something so vulnerable online if I didn't think that a lot of people would like it," she said.
Lichtstein added that she's kept in contact with the Canadian man. "I think he's having a lot of fun with it," she said. "He really liked it."