Rehashing the past — with receipts. YouTuber Tana Mongeau exposed text messages that revealed ex-boyfriend Brad Sousa’s cheating scandal, which led to their April 2019 breakup.
It all started on Tuesday, December 29, when the 22-year-old decided to partake in the “Post a photo of …” viral challenge on her Instagram Stories. The first fan prompt asked for a photo from April 21, 2019. “Screenshots of my boyfriend cheating on me, LMAO, great start!” the vlogger captioned the screengrab from what appeared to be text messages or Instagram DMs.
“Before Tana, everyone thought he was just some waste guy,” the message read. “I saw them at the bar (Brixton) in December and everyone was just talking about how he was f—king sorority girls and cheating on Tana. One of my friends matched with him on Tinder while they were together.”
The MTV star and the Justin Bieber lookalike, 22, started dating in December 2018. The musician allegedly cheated on the Streamy Award winner via Snapchat, according to several fans who did some sleuthing during the scandal. They even alerted Tana to the alleged infidelity by tagging her in a social media post at the time. “Why is your boyfriend hitting me up?” the user wrote.
Days after Tana and Brad called it quits, the Bustedness star took to her YouTube channel to address the demise of their relationship in a video titled “I Got Cheated On But That’s OK.” In the 19-minute video — which has nearly 6 million views to date — the Las Vegas native noted that while she wanted to open up about what happened, she wasn’t trying to “crucify” her ex by making the video.
“He’s a person who made some mistakes,” Tana said at the time. “I just wanted it to work … I still want it to work. I miss him a lot.”
The Los Angeles resident also noted that setting a good example when it comes to love became crucial to her based on this experience. “As much as I hate to admit it, no matter what I do, millions of young girls and guys follow me,” she explained. “I like to even think that growing up had I been watching a YouTuber who was putting out the right messages of how to act in relationships when you’re treated poorly that there would have been a chance that I wouldn’t have let myself get treated so poorly in so many relationships.”
In May 2019, Brad made an apology video and explained his side of the story via his YouTube channel. He claimed that — though Tana’s story was “exaggerated” to an extent — he did cheat on her by replying to Snapchat nudes from “girls back home.” However, the influencer maintained that he never “physically touched” another girl while he and Tana were dating.