‘I was not going to take one for the team’: Man claims he went on Applebee’s date with JD Vance in 2001
A TikToker claims that he is “99% sure” he went on a date with Republican vice presidential hopeful Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). Not only that, but he remembers him as giving off “serial killer vibes.”
The video racked up over almost a quarter-million views on the site. Yet it exploded after being reposted by X user Right Wing Cope (@rightwingcope) this week, with more than 4 million views and 26,000 likes.
“BREAKING: A Male TikToker allegedly went on a date with JD Vance after meeting on a gay dating website (before he changed his name, I wonder why?!),” the post reads.
The video is attributed to TikTok user Colby (@colbycake). He has been critical of both Republicans and Democrats on his platform. We have reached out to the Trump campaign via email and to Vance via Facebook Messenger about it.
In an interview with the Daily Dot, @ColbyCake says that while he initially tried to dissuade himself of the possibility that his date way back when was Vance, he’s now “99% sure” he met the Republican vice presidential candidate at in Applebee's in 2001.
“Yes, there’s some doubt, there’s a possibility there could be another person that looks just like him, but in my mind, the similarities are too close,” he adds. The Daily Dot confirmed Colby’s identity, but is respecting his wishes to not use his real name.
A viral claim
The original TikTok from five days ago is nearly 10 minutes long and starts with Colby saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems: I am 90% sure that I went on a date with this man.”
In the TikTok video, there is a screenshot of a July 23 article from the Advocate with the headline, “How JD Vance went from thinking he was gay and changing his name twice to being an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist.”
Business Insider also recently covered how Vance went from believing he was gay as a child to an anti-LGBTQ+ activist in adulthood.
In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote at a very young age he thought that he was gay because he understood it simply to mean liking men, such as friends, but that a crass insult from his grandmother disabused him of that notion.
He’s since become very outspoken in favor of heteronormative relationships, saying childless couples have less of a stake in America’s future. While campaigning for Senate in 2022, he said he opposed federal legislation to ensure protections for same-sex marriage.
Colby says in the video that Vance first came on his radar when he “watched Hillbilly Elegy about four years ago on Netflix, I looked him up. Because I’m like, ‘Wow, he’s like the same age as me. Wow, he grew up in Middletown. That’s not too far from where I grew up.’”
Who is Colby?
Colby tells the Daily Dot he grew up in Southwest Ohio and moved away when he turned 18. According to a Facebook profile the Daily Dot confirmed is his, his hometown is listed as approximately 13 miles north of Vance’s hometown, with several Applebee’s in between.
After he saw coverage of Vance’s past comments, he began feeling that he looked more familiar given the possibility of them going on a date was no longer completely absurd.
“Then I actually started looking up what he looked like when he was a teenager, and that’s when I saw his yearbook photo and … I’m like 99% sure that’s the same person,” he tells the Daily Dot.
“My first thought was I’m pretty sure this is the same person, I’m almost positive I want on a date with this guy” he adds. “He kinda looks different now than when he did when he was younger but you can definitely… the eyes are the same, it’s a very distinct look. He has a very distinct and memorable face.”
Colby says he also watched a few videos as well, and “just the way he kind of hunched over a little bit, that just reminds me of the behavior he had when we were meeting at the restaurant.”
How Colby thinks he met Vance
In the TikTok, the background changes to a screenshot of PlanetOut. As Colby explains, PlanetOut was a website in the 1990s that served as an LGBTQ+ community hub and offered news, entertainment, and personal ads in an era before dating apps existed. Users could create profiles and communicate with each other and many men have boasted about meeting their now-husbands through the site.
“There’s a lot of people I met on PlanetOut.com that I’m still friends with. But, also, basically, this allowed a dating pool for someone our age,” Colby explains. “In high school, you were pretty much limited to only dating people in your high school. And there aren’t that many people that were out.”
Colby tells the Daily Dot that the pool of people on Planet Out at that time were small. Perhaps only 20-30 people in the area who were around his age.
He says the two discussed their lives on PlanetOut. He adds he “recalled he had a profile up there for quite a lot of time.”
Colby notes that given the circumstances in his life, the two bonded. “Vance and I have some similar life stories,” he tells the Daily Dot, noting that he had a family member who suffered from addiction as well, a common theme in Hillbilly Elegy.
Details of the alleged date
In the video, Colby claims, “I remember, he was really pushy about meeting. And we didn’t really have that many pictures that we could share, but I remember not being totally certain about if he was the person he said he was. I’m pretty sure he used that picture from his high school yearbook as his photo.”
It wasn’t uncommon for gay teens to feel isolated and lonely in that era, Colby says. PlanetOut provided one of the few spaces where LGBTQ+ youth could communicate. “Essentially, if you wanted to meet other people who were like you, this is where you did it,” Colby says. “Pretty much, if you were gay and had the internet in Southwest Ohio in 2000, 2002—you knew everyone, and you dated them.”
“Essentially, I remember going on a date with this guy,” Colby says in the video. “Pretty sure it was JD Vance. It wasn’t JD Vance… that’s not the name he went by back then”
Colby tells the Daily Dot that he recalled Vance going by the name David at the time. This is his middle name.
In the video, he added. “But, essentially, we went on a date at Applebee’s by the Dayton Mall … 2001 or 2002 … and I remember him being very strange, very creepy. Like gave off serial killer vibes.”
Colby tells the Daily Dot he didn’t remember much about the date. Mostly, that he wanted to get out of there fast.
According to Colby, he was “trying to figure out a way to let this guy down.”
He tells the Daily Dot that after the date, Vance called his home phone. And pressed him to keep up the conversation, despite Colby wishing to let him down gently.
Colby says the conversation, though, was very memorable, with Vance being extremely pushy about specific things.
Why Colby's speaking out
“It’s within the realm of possibility that I am the reason why he changed his mind about being gay. And, for that, I am not sorry. I’m sorry about Project 2025, but I was not going to take one for the team,” he concludes.
Colby tells the Daily Dot that he was not able to provide any people he contemporaneously told the story to corroborate the story. But that given the circumstances and “embarrassing” nature of the date, adding “I never thought I would see him again.”
But he hopes the data is out there.
@colbycake #JDVance allegedly has a sock fetish. I'm sorry about #Project2025 #PlanetOut ♬ original sound - ColbyCake
“And also, for the love of God, if there is anybody who used to work for PlanetOut.com or has access to the data from this website?” he says in the video. “I would kill to find out if that still exists.
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