Content creator Maria Bergmann first heard the term “sprinkle sprinkle” three years ago. The term originates from YouTuber Leticia Padua (known as Shera Seven), who uses it as a catchphrase and a way to say “blessings” while dishing out relationship tips online. This advice plays into traditional gender roles and is often highly controversial – telling women to reverse “anything that comes out of a man’s mouth,” laugh if a date suggests splitting the bill, use men for money alone (never emotional support), and to cheat on anyone who is “broke”. Still, to Shera’s millions of followers, her outlook perfectly captures young heterosexual women’s increasing frustration with dating today. For Bergmann, “sprinkle sprinkle” completely shifted her approach to dating. “I started watching Shera’s videos once a week and six months later I found my boyfriend,” she says.

Bergmann spoke to me over the phone from her vacation at the Four Seasons in Thailand. “We travel a lot,” she says. “And I just moved to Norway for him so he put my name on the house.” As it turns out, this is all part of the “sprinkle sprinkle” method. Now three years into the relationship, she says she set the tone early, thanks to Shera’s advice. Around their two-month anniversary, Bergmann asked her boyfriend to pay the deposit for her new apartment. “Shera says that if a man is really interested in you, he’s going to show you that he loves you financially,” she says. “So I told him it was $2,500 and he just sent it to my bank account.” Bergmann still watches Shera’s videos weekly, treating them like a dating bible. “My goal now is to get married,” she says. And, of course, Shera’s YouTube is there to help guide her to that destination.

Across social media, people like Bergmann post their aspirational lifestyle as proof that the “sprinkle sprinkle” method works while single women share resources for finding and dating rich men, including becoming a cart attendant at a golf club or visiting specific bars in New York. While the phrase “marrying up” could easily remind you of the complex social mobility dynamics of Bridgerton, the age-old practice of hypergamy still has a solid place in the modern dating scene. To luxury matchmaker and dating coach May Kalinu, “sprinkle sprinkle” has grown to represent women setting a boundary with what’s expected when dating men. “As women achieve higher levels of education and career success, they want partners who can match their level of financial ambition and emotional labour of providing for the family,” she says. “Women want men to pay for dinner – it’s the least they could do given the hurdles.”

Like Shera, Kalinu provides relationship advice for women who want to be spoiled by their male partners. She started creating videos in 2020, after getting laid off from her corporate job and receiving support from her partner. Today, her audience of over 280,000 mostly consists of 25 to 35 year old women. “These women are unapologetically prioritising their wants and needs, leading to a greater emphasis on relationships that offer both emotional fulfilment and financial security,” she says. And it’s easy to see why some women are collectively saying enough is enough (with the 4B movement encouraging the refusal of heterosexual marriage entirely). Over the past 50 years, the share of women who earn as much or more than their husbands has tripled, but even wives who outearn their spouses are still doing hours more care and housework, while their husbands enjoy more leisure time. Then there’s the gender pay gap, where the inequality is even greater for Black and Hispanic women.

Searching for the “sprinkle sprinkle” experience could be seen as giving the middle finger to the pressure for women to “do it all”, but that doesn’t mean Shera’s advice isn’t rife with gendered expectations. She has strong feelings about how women should dress for men and tells her followers to use their “feminine voice”. Josie Glass, a 26-year-old entrepreneur in Fort Lauderdale, is just one of the many women implementing this advice into their everyday lives. Since discovering Shera’s videos a year ago, Glass says she’s been dressing and speaking differently – talking “more professionally” and putting more pride into her appearance. “I have been attracting what I consider to be high-value men,” she says. “Sprinkle sprinkle will ultimately benefit dating culture because men are stepping up their game and striving to be a provider while women hold themselves to higher standards.” Unfortunately, this traditionally feminine physical advice and phrases like “high value” or “provider” also overlap with the misogynistic dating advice spewed out by the likes of Andrew Tate.

For 26-year-old content L.K.P, following the “sprinkle sprinkle” guidelines has been lonely. “There’s a need to be cutthroat and unwavering in your standards to truly embody the approach,” she says. “It does weed out the men you thought you were interested in, but choosing yourself above everything else is a surprisingly difficult lifestyle to maintain.” She tried dressing up and going to an affluent restaurant by herself (per Shera’s advice) but felt “icky” about the intention of actively trying to get men to notice her, so she didn’t even leave her car. Now, she’s deleted all dating apps, stopped attending singles events, and feels strongly that she’ll meet someone once it’s time. Still, she considers “sprinkle sprinkle” to be the final straw for many women and, to her personally, a hopeful call from a fairy godmother. “It's like waking up from the cognitive belief that dating has to be hard, that you have to settle, and that what you want isn’t attainable,” she says. “Saying ‘sprinkle sprinkle’ is like saying ‘walk towards the light.’”