The subtext was everything. The men were props—punchlines for bad jokes, obstacles to the real romance. The real romance was Rue’s wet nose on her cheek at 3 a.m., the shared sock-stealing conspiracy, the wordless agreement to abandon a bad Tinder date to go home and eat pizza on the floor together.
Rue sighed—that deep, full-body, judgmental pit-bull sigh—and rolled over for a belly rub.
The undisputed queen of this genre was 34-year-old former graphic designer, Maya Chen. Her channel, “Rue & The Ruff Life,” had 40 million followers across platforms. Her content was deceptively simple: short, cinematically shot clips of her life with her three-legged rescue pit bull, Rue.