It’s a Friday, and do you know what that means? It’s the perfect time to deep dive into the absolutely cooked depths of Reddit in search of something, anything that will give me a will to live.
Today’s little gift: an anonymous thread of people who are/were friends with influencers.
This thread, started by user u/superfuncity and brought to my attention by BuzzFeed, simply asks what it’s like to be IRL friends with social media “influencers.”
Let’s kick it off with the most up-voted response, which happens to be a lengthy one. I present to you: Influencer Bridezilla, courtesy of u/whenthesunrise.
“Awful. One of my best friends fell real hard into Instagram, and for a few years it was tolerable and understandable, albeit annoying and strange. Everything needed to be documented in specific ways, so lots & lots of photos, even if it took away from the moment. But the strange part was how, when she’d share things, the captions always told a slightly different story than what actually happened. Like just off enough for me and my other friends to say, huh, that has a weird quality to it.
Fast forward a couple years, and she gets engaged. Boom. This was the catalyst for the worst of the influencer mentality to come out. I was in the bridal party, and it was a nightmare. No gratitude, just demands. Demands for expensive trips and expensive parties and all kinds of things that were above and beyond the means of her closest friends. And all the demands were because she had a “following” and had certain expectations to meet.
It was really heart wrenching to witness someone belittle their best friend and maid of honor for trying to plan a sweet bridal shower because it wasn’t going to be at an expensive restaurant or art gallery. It reached its peak for me when, after the in-state wedding became an expensive destination wedding, there was the demand for an out-of-town bachelorette party a few weeks before. I was honest and said I couldn’t afford the bachelorette (mind you, I made about a thousand sacrifices over those months to afford what I could), and was promptly bridezilla’d and told I ruined the whole experience and that I was an awful, fake, inauthentic person.
It got so bad that the bridal party fractured and disintegrated, she lost two of her best friends (myself and the MOH didn’t even attend the wedding after all her behavior and blow-ups), and we’ve barely spoken since. All so she could have an instagrammable wedding that would look good for the few photos she ended up sharing of it. And, true to the weird strange re-written reality ways she had, she published a public “apology” on her blog for her followers and family that completely distorted and rewrote what happened, painted herself as the victim, and got her the sympathy points she was looking for.
Ppl really lose themselves when they create an artifice for social media. I learned a lot from her.”
And then we’ve got the friend who won’t come to your birthday party but *will* go to a shitty promotional event for a skinny tea that makes you shit your brains out.
“She hasn’t come to anything I’ve invited her to in 5 years because she only goes to events that “further her business.” Regularly says things like, “we’re all using each other for something.” Sometimes she texts me the same exact thing word for word over a couple of days, and it’s obvious she just copy/pastes the same thing and sends it to all of us and then forgets who she has sent it to,” Reddit user Cirrus-Ramparts said.
“She still reaches out to me multiple times a year and claims I’m one of her best friends, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. I’ve told her as much, but she just says “this is my life now, my business comes first and if you can’t accept that, then I guess you’re not a real friend.”
Another “wannabe influencer” has been called out for apparently replying to her own stories.
“I know a wannabe influencer. She will reply to her own posts from her husband’s account praising herself. Then she will reply to those posts as herself thanking him, it’s hilarious, like inception for Facebook,” u/sydneyfigtree said.
And last, but certainly not least, we’ve got this guy, who claims he met DJ Khaled and had a less-than-desirable experience.
“I don’t know if this counts, but I work at a record company and artist are always coming in and out of our office. Well one day I walked in on DJ Khaled screaming at this new girl. He was really yelling at her, telling her ” I got the number one album of the year, what do you have? You don’t have shit” and not 4 minutes later he’s on snapchat praising god and giving inspirational speeches,” u/femtosenju said.
I am now deeply invested in finding out the hot goss on influencers. If you’re friends or *were* friends with an influencer, please feel free to slide into my DMs with your story (lavender.baj@pedestriangroup.com.au).
