NYT Reporter Discovers VHS Dating Tapes Were Staged by Filmmakers

A New York Times reporter, Sopan Deb, traveled to Los Angeles to meet the creators of the Instagram account VHS Dates, which had amassed nearly 900,000 followers by posting grainy videos purportedly from an old dating service. However, during a tour of their studio, the creators revealed that the videos were staged, shattering the illusion. The account was the brainchild of filmmakers Lee Citron and Trevor Worley, both 39, who used a 1980s Ikegami tube camera and sourced period-accurate clothing from Sears catalogs to achieve an authentic look. They compared the hoax to kayfabe, a wrestling term for presenting staged events as real. The deception had been suspected earlier; a Reddit post from a year prior identified actors in the videos and linked to their IMDB pages. Since the revelation, the account has not posted since May, as the actors began to be recognized. Deb expressed that while the tapes were fake, they captured a vulnerability rarely seen today, and many viewers were relieved the videos were not AI-generated. The story was published in The New York Times, and PetaPixel also noted another NYT staffer was tricked by President Trump earlier that week.