Shock Value Relationship

"I'm dating Dylan, a woman who volunteers at the Coalition For Gay, Lesbian And Bi Rights For The Homeless. Sure, I'm not really a lesbian, but showing up at Take Back The Night with Dylan captured a lot of attention. When I was in the bathroom stall the other day, I heard two girls I didn't even know talking about me. See, this feminism stuff works."

- Megan Heller, The Onion

Most relationships are about mutual attraction -- or at least a mutual something -- but sometimes, there's another motive at work: Someone's only in it for the attention. Maybe it's a teenage girl dating a punk to get a rise out of dad, or a gay guy who's just not that into the other gay guy but really likes shoving it in everyone's faces. The person actually serious about the relationship might want to wait to kiss until nobody's looking, but the one out for shock value will only want to kiss when everybody's looking. Hilarity Ensues -- or Tragedy Ensues, depending on how seriously this is played.

This seems to mostly happen with girls, due to the popular belief that women form romantic bonds out of convenience while men do so only out of instinct. The character who's serious about the relationship will probably come across as The Woobie for their one-sided affections.

Operation Jealousy is a Sub Trope.

Note: This trope was recently expanded from dealing with only homosexual relationships, hence their predominance in the examples section. Please help add other examples.

Comic Books

 * A particularly nasty version of this is part of Dr. Mann's backstory in Y the Last Man.
 * Phat and Vivisector from Marvel's X-Statix comic pretend to be gay to steal the media spotlight back from their teammates. Phat breaks with the ruse, and eventually

Live Action TV

 * Andrew's relationship with Justin on Desperate Housewives. Justin was in love, Andrew used him to drive his mother insane. Andrew's still gay, though.
 * While they were divorced, Gabrielle pretended to have very loud sex with a business competitor that Carlos knew, to make him stop thinking she still loved him.
 * Miranda on Sex and The City pretends to date a Lesbian in an early episode to curry favour with the boss at her law firm. Fun fact, Cynthia Nixon who played Miranda have later come out as a late-in-life Lesbian.
 * Oddly enough subverted with Samantha's short fling with a lesbian. At first it seemed like it would be a big shocking story line that would be played up, but it was oddly underplayed, with none of them treating it like a very shocking thing. Most likely because Samantha can't really surprise them anymore.
 * It was more shocking that Samantha was in a RELATIONSHIP than a lesbian one. Her friends were shocked by they were waiting to have sex.
 * Played with in Boston Legal -
 * Murphy Brown and her black boss at one point found it really amusing to "shock" people, especially by sending them kahlua and cream drinks. Eventually they figured out that the one thing they had in common was liking to screw with people.
 * Paul Kinsey of Mad Men dated a black woman in Season 2 basically for the shock value/to indicate how "forward-thinking" and "artistic" he was. She eventually sees right through him and kicks him to the curb.
 * Averted by
 * Ja'maie King from Summer Heights High does this twice over the course of an eight episode series: First by going out with a year 7 boy four years her junior, and again when she asks another girl to the year 11 Formal.
 * In Degrassi, Claire invited Eli over for dinner with her parents just as a way of shocking them with his black clothes, hearse, and chain necklaces to get back at them for getting a divorce. Eli was completely humiliated that she used him like that.

Web Original

 * The Onion did a couple of articles on this topic here and here.

Web Comics

 * Shortpacked. Poor, poor Leslie. Robin does eventually kiss her, however. Eventually they become girlfriends for realz.

Western Animation

 * The Moral Orel episode "Closeface" had the lesbian couple Stephanie and Kim. Turns out Kim was using this trope all along, breaking Stephanie's heart. And it turns out one of the persons they shocked,  Rev. Putty, saw right though it as well and felt bad for Stephanie.
 * Toyed with once on Family Guy, when Meg pretends to be a lesbian in order to get some friends. A rare example of the deceptive one being the Butt Monkey.