Benji Aguirre
Audio By Carbonatix
You may not recognize her by name, but you probably know the tiny red cups held by Elsbeth Weempe and the many shirtless eligible bachelors in her viral, short-form Elsbeats on the Streets videos on social media. With more than 40,000 followers on her Instagram page, the self-proclaimed “dating journalist” — though she admits she’s not a reporter and the title is more of a marketing tool than anything else — has made it her mission to give hope to Dallas daters by interviewing them on the Katy Trail.
The two-ish minute-long videos feature the tanned, toned, fit and ready, and she usually pulls them right off the trail, still sweaty. Weempe, a born-and-bred Dallasite, is intense with little intonation; she’s a straight shooter, knocking out the questions you wish you could ask on a first date, but might not have the immediate courage to ask.
“Have you ever been in love?” “What are your real intentions in dating?” Or one of her most frequently asked questions: “When was the last time you asked someone on a date?” Sometimes the videos are refreshing, sharing various perspectives on dating trends, like experiencing swiping fatigue from online dating. For some, it’s a noble effort, particularly in a city that has been outspoken about the challenges of dating around here.
Her content offers a unique peek into the Dallas dating scene, or at least one corner of it. By and large, Weempe’s subjects are wealthy, white, conventionally attractive men and women. It’s a criticism her viewers have pointed out, and while there is some diversity within her content, Weempe says she’s giving her audience what they want.
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“I’m very diverse. I’m very open to that,” she tells us.
Weempe has been asked about her selective subject pool beyond the comment section as well.
“The [reporter from a TV news station] asked, ‘Do you ever interview normal-looking people?’ I’m like, ‘I want to get views,'” she says. “People watch Hollywood because it’s good-looking people.”
It’s not the only time Weempe has been criticized in that way.
“It’s very middle school…,” said TikTok user @kbdally14, peeved by Weempe’s content. “Can we mix it up a little? Why aren’t you asking any gays any questions?”
To her credit, Weempe has interviewed people of all ages, genders, abilities and sexualities, but the non-straight and non-white remain the stark minority of her coverage. She even reached out to the aforementioned critic, offering to interview him on her page. She says he flaked.
Still, she says she wants to expand, aware of the gaps and particularly seeking opportunities to cover lesbian dating issues, but the numbers don’t lie, and her engagement remains high when she interviews attractive men, especially those with less than kosher things to say.
“My most viral video has almost three million views,” she says. “There are over 3,000 comments of people hating him, but he’s like, ‘I don’t mind being the villain.’”
The Men of The Katy Trail
In that particular video, now sitting at 3.3 million views, a shirtless 31-year-old broker named John walking the trail in flip flops says he asks someone out every single day, preferably women with “olive skin.” He then says his primary concern when dating in Dallas is if a woman will bring “peace or chaos” to his life, a filter that many women in this city don’t pass, he alleges. Weempe giggles at this. John clarifies that in his experience, women expect a lot from men, but he wonders what they bring to the table. John then says that wanting a first date staged over a nice dinner is a red flag.
The comments might suggest that toes out on a gravel trail, a supposed dating roster of potentially 365 women and describing your type as a skin tone is a red flag. But Weempe thanks him for “espressing” himself regardless.
In another video, we’re subjected to Pete, a 28-year-old salesman. He’s in the market for a “submissive, Godly, unvaccinated woman.”
Weempe asks him to repeat.
“Unvaccinated,” he says.
But that isn’t what she meant. She was more curious about “submissive.” With a cheeky grin, she asks what he means, pushing back on his proclaimed distaste for “boss babes.”
“It’s against women’s nature,” he tells her. “I just think that bossing a man around is outside of a woman’s nature. Boss babes are women that do not want to submit to male authority in their life, whether that’s your father, or your pastor or your husband. I think that just leads to problems. And I think if you look around the world today, you see it everywhere, where a lot of women do get to do whatever they want to do.”
While a man who doesn’t believe in women’s free will may sound unappealing, Weempe said Pete’s email, listed in the video’s caption, has been flooded with over 60 wife applications. The comments were mixed with takes ranging from “he’s going to make a great husband” to “this is fucking insane” and “Christian female here… I cringed the whole time.”
There truly is a lid for every jar, as they say. Weempe says it’s her due diligence to portray even the most extreme viewpoints.
“Being a journalist, you have to be neutral, so I’m open to all types of views,” she said. “So I’m not like, ‘I don’t want this person on my page.’”
Weempe does not have any formal training in journalism and self-publishes all her content. But honest and courageous reporting remains a pillar of ethical journalism practices for all journalists, so we’ll acknowledge the commitment to depicting Dallas daters accurately.
While it’s not necessarily an entirely accurate portrayal of Dallas’ diverse dating pool, anyone who’s swiped left on an app more than five times in a row can attest to the city’s large population of traditional men. However, statistically, Dallas, a city of 1.3 million people, is approximately 36% white, and similarly, 36% of the city’s residents make more than $75,000 a year. But there are still the other 64% — you don’t need us to do the math for you on that one.
When asked if she has decided to prioritize the upper echelon of Dallas society, the inaccessible 1 percent-ers who are a degree of separation from the Jones family, revel in privilege and have vacation homes in Aspen, Weempe answered simply.
“Yes. I’m in it.”
And we’re all on different algorithms, to be fair.
