Actually, DadTok Can't Survive This

The age-old question “will MomTok survive this?” has never felt more pertinent. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives pressed pause on filming Season 5 due to a domestic violence investigation between Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex Dakota Mortensen. ABC pulled her season of The Bachelorette days before the planned premiere, while her co-star Jessi Draper is divorcing her husband, Jordan Ngatikaura, and making major allegations about their marriage on the Call Her Daddy podcast.

However, one good thing has actually come out of this turmoil: DadTok can’t survive this.

The husbands, boyfriends, and baby daddies of the Mormon Wives cast — including Taylor, Jessi, Whitney Leavitt, Jen Affleck, Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Matthews, Layla Taylor, Miranda Hope, and (sometimes) Demi Engemann — have tried to feed off MomTok’s success by forming their own influencer group. It’s fallen flat, and that was before all of the ongoing scandals.

When the fourth season of the Hulu series premiered on March 12, social media was flooded with complaints that DadTok was taking up way too much screen time for a show called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives — emphasis on the “wives.” Fans got frustrated as the men commiserated about being stay-at-home dads or standing on the sidelines as their wives became the breadwinners. As one TikToker eloquently put it, “Stop twerking and start working.”

Even when MomTok was present, the men tended to suck the energy out of the room. Just look at the first episode, when Jordan blatantly interrupted Mikayla’s baby blessing to announce that DadTok had been invited to Vanderpump Villa, acting as if it were an honor that some of MomTok hadn’t already received.

This isn’t to say that DadTok is completely gone yet. The third season of Vanderpump Villa premieres in April, and they have already filmed part of Mormon Wives Season 5. If cameras pick back up again, it’s hard to imagine Jordan and Dakota turning down a paycheck to share their sides of their stories. But their respective scandals signal the beginning of the end.

Now that Jessi is divorcing Jordan (the self-proclaimed “leader” of DadTok) and Dakota got a temporary restraining order against Taylor, there’s no reason for them to come around MomTok often. Plus, Jen and Mikayla have seemingly moved their families to California, where a Mormon Wives spinoff is reportedly being planned, which will further split the husband group.

To be fair, some of them are acknowledging the backlash, with Mikayla’s and Mayci’s husbands, Jace and Jacob, respectively, poking fun at DadTok in hilarious videos. Hopefully, that’s a sign they’re fine with taking a back seat to their better halves.

But if that’s not enough, Jessi rang DadTok’s death knell on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “I don’t think it can continue. I think the world has spoken, and they’re done,” she said, laughing.