Elyse Knowles has finally addressed the ‘wallah’ heard around the world. The influencer’s failed attempt to spell ‘voila’ went viral last year, but it’s only now with a fancy new Stellar Magazine interview and photoshoot that she feels ready to spill.
The spelling mistake was first picked up by Aussie Instagram account Celeb Spellcheck (does what it says on the tin), but really took off when The Fat Jewish posted about it in December.
“Spending an unhealthy amount of time thinking about how this influencer spelled ‘voila’,” he said.
Elyse’s Instagram page was FLOODED with ‘wallah’ comments, but now she’s laughed the whole thing off, which is absolutely the best way to deal with being the internet laughing stock for 0.3 seconds.
“I make mistakes all the time [on social media],” she told Stellar.
“It’s who I am. I haven’t been deeply affected by it at all because I spell things wrong all the time. I don’t know. I can’t spell for shit!”
She continued: “I know that, and I’m OK with that. I still don’t know [how to spell it]. But there’s a global pandemic and the whole of the Australian media is reporting on one word. I’m still getting notifications every day that people are writing about it. But if it gave someone a laugh, then… whatever. I chuckled over it, too.”
However, Elyse mum wasn’t all that happy with the outsize reaction, and reckoned the endless comments crossed the line into bullying. Honestly, fair enough. If one of my many spelling mistakes was picked up by a meme account best known for stealing jokes and posting them without credit, I’d probably go to bed and not get out for weeks.
Celeb Spellcheck – a mysterious Melbourne Instagram account keeping influencers humble – is dedicated to screenshotting dumb and silly mistakes and preserving them for perpetuity.
A recent favourite? This one, about Izzy Sharman-Firth‘s day at the beach. The caption just said, “Turn around, @izisgram” and let me tell you – the noises I made were not human.
You can give her a sneaky follow request here, and find out the tea on influencers vs Celeb Spellcheck here.
