Oops, the girliepops are trying to redefine Girl Code. And before you pick up your pitchforks with the clean-girl aesthetic, I ask you to hear me out. My 30+ years of Girl Code experience speaks for itself (yes, I came out of the womb as my sisters’ ride-or-die, just ask them). I love your boyfriend until you break up with him, and then he’s dead to me too. If your former best friend You She has done wrong Me also wrong, and no, I won’t even consider posting the picture where you look like you just crawled out of a swamp, even if it’s the only one where my butt looks fat. As a girl with a deathly allergy to boy-girls who are too cool to show their contours, I have to say that I think TikTok is taking the wrong side of history when it comes to this Halley Kate “vs.” Sophia La Corte boy drama.

Halley Kate is a very popular influencer who lives in New York. You may know her from the praise she received for being able to buy a house in the Hamptons on her influencer salary, or from the subsequent petty backlash that clarified that the house in question is actually in Hampton Bays. Anyway, here’s the recap: Halley dated a guy named Reed Williams for nine months, according to her timeline — meaning they would have hypothetically gotten together in spring 2023. They broke up in November, as claimed by Halley, but just a month later, he was photographed with another influencer, Sophia La Corte, in December 2023. Why the drama?! Halley and Sophia were friends (depending on who you ask). Although Halley is back together with Reed, Sophia has now decided to spill her side of the story, as Halley previously criticized Sophia for participating in “homey hopping.” Here’s a girl-code-checked version of the TikTok drama surrounding Halley and Sophia’s love triangle.

What happened to Halley and Sophia from Halley’s perspective?

@halleykate♬ suono originale – Sweet Melodies

Halley stated that she “considered Sophia a friend” in now-deleted TikToks, as previously transcribed by Your Campus(The publication reached out for comment and did not receive a response.) Sophia had even left her bag with Halley for safekeeping, and Halley had “bought Sophia shots.” So you can imagine Halley’s surprise when one of the NYC influencer snark subreddits worked overtime to catch Halley’s new ex, Reed, with Sophia, supposedly on a date the next night. After Halley found out Sophia had DMed Reed and they had indeed gone out together, Halley texted Sophia (which Sophia admits she ignored) and then made several videos on TikTok about the situation. Her followers quickly deduced that Halley was outing Sophia as the problem girl. Of course, this influencer war was sparked to the music of Taylor Swift’s “Karma.” To be fair, Halley also directed virtual heat at her ex at the time, accusing him of “homey hopping” with Sophia and warning her followers, “Ladies, let me teach you a lesson. Never feel sorry for a man or defend him.” But the internet is no longer mad at Reed: My FYP is full of friends and followers reading Sophia into the ground for being a “nutcase,” “influence-hungry,” girl-code-cracking “adulteress” now that Halley has taken Reed back. But Sophia still decided to tell her side of the story…

What is Sopia’s side of the Halley-Kate drama?

@sophialacortei was bored today ♬ Original sound – Sophia la Corte

Sophia has a similar, yet different story to tell. Sophia said she met Halley (who fans quickly noticed she mispronounced as Hailey) “three times” in total while working as an influencer. From Sophia’s perspective, they aren’t friends or even colleagues, but rather acquaintances in the same field. To be honest, if you have to text someone for the first time stating who you are because you know they don’t have your number saved, I don’t think you can call yourself “friends.” And that’s exactly what happened when Halley inquired about whether the rumors about her husband were true. Sophia also wanted it known that Halley didn’t have her purse, that she had a gift bag that Sophia no longer wanted and was told would be donated to charity, and that there were no purchased photos at a free influencer event. It’s easy to split hairs here, but it seems that the two influencers were at least friends, but definitely far from best friends. Which makes what follows very nuanced.

Is it against the girl code to court someone else’s ex?

@halleykate♬ Original sound – 🕕🎵⸆⸉

I’ll hold your hand when I tell you: No one can take your partner away from you. Unless these Etsy witchcraft spells are way more powerful than I think they are, when a man leaves, he leaves willingly. While it would be ideal if everyone I’ve ever met who was also nice or breathed the same air as me would stay the hell out of my male territory so I don’t have to hear about it or imagine them together, that’s just not the reality. There are a million comments asking why she didn’t literally pick someone else, but that question is irrelevant. The real girl code, or perhaps the grown woman code, is to realize that the only thing that matters here is that Halley’s ex-boyfriend-turned-boyfriend-again was the only one who had an obligation to consider Halley’s feelings first when starting something new. It may be a reckless, self-serving approach to dating, but you can’t rip off someone you’ve never pledged unspoken loyalty to.

The ironic thing about this controversy is that the majority of the videos trashing Sophia suggest that bringing this topic up again is proof that Sophia is clearly a “bad, mean girl” who wants everything Halley has, including her internet fame. They’ve made fun of Sophia’s voice, her obvious shallowness, her simply ~embarrassing~ lack of followers compared to Halley’s, and her obsession with the situation they “hypothetically” saw her rant about in acting class. With all due respect, I think many of us non-actors would find many people in your NYC acting class full of TikTokers a bit over the summitIn fact, all influencers in this field are a little bit obsessed with their looks, and that’s why we watch them get dressed every day!

I’m not saying Halley’s friends shouldn’t support her. Whenever my best friend’s ex starts hitting it hard, I make fun of the new girl’s outfit, the way she parts her hair – something to comfort my girlfriend when she feels insecure in group text. Vilifying a person in public (who wasn’t the one who exposed the situation in the first place) doesn’t feel very girl power to me. Just like Halley posted, she has the right to speak out about her experience, right Sophia? It can’t work just one way or on Halley’s timeline because Halley chose to bring back the person who could have solved the problem in the first place.

If Sophia had gone public with this gossip, engagement day, or when she displayed an intensity like Alexis Bellino in her videos, I could certainly understand the anger. But since it’s just another damn Tuesday, wouldn’t Halley’s best revenge have been to continue enjoying her healed relationship instead of giving this person the influence her girl gang claims is Sophia’s only possible motive for her post? No one has to like the smug throne from which Sophia shares her opinions (literal or otherwise), but the reality is that you don’t have to be an empath to put yourself in both of their shoes and understand where they’re coming from.

Instead of healthy discourse, or even just cheering Halley up when she’s really depressed, TikTok is full of vicious girl-on-girl thrills, all for a guy that half of her fans and Halley thought was trash six months ago. Let’s hope the next six months bring a lot more peace to everyone.