"When The Cellphone Cameras Are Off, The Work Ethic Is Gone," And 16 Other Real-Life Experiences People Had With Influencers
An influencer's job often involves creating a specific "persona" for the camera. In real life, they may not be as enthusiastic or confident as they appear on camera.
Recently, redditor u/Notalabel_4566 asked, "People who work with 'influencers' or have worked for, what were they like?"
They got replies from people who were friends with or related to influencers, too.
Here are 17 of the most interesting answers:
1."My distant cousins have a YouTube family channel. At our shared great-grandmother's funeral, they were rudely telling all the other kids, 'I'm only sitting here because my mom says I have to be nice to our fans.'"
2."My best friend's brother is the DermDoctor (Dr. Shah) on TikTok with, like, 18 million followers, and I've known him my whole life. I've never seen any of his TikToks, so IDK how he comes across online, but he's a really nice, soft-spoken boy IRL."
3."When I waited tables in LA, I found A-listers to be way nicer, more personable, and better tippers than influencers. Tana [Mongeau] made a reservation at one restaurant I worked at, and her posse doesn't have a good reputation. Thankfully, they never showed up which kind of tracks from everything I know of Tana."
"Also, I will say, I feel bad 'cuz I think their content is harmless, and they are very sweet, but the food influencers are painfully cringe to me. Ring lights at tables and filming super exaggerated reactions to food... IDK, it's just not my thing. Again, I just feel guilty because they actually do help put some smaller spots on the map with their content."
4."I had a travel blogger friend who was filming while we were out one day to celebrate my birthday, and then she posted the video on YouTube without asking my permission. I asked her to edit me out as politely as I could, but she wasn't happy about that and ended up taking the whole video down. Our friendship ended there."
"So [influencers are] mildly insufferable, I'd say. Always 'on' and engaging with social media. A lot of interactions felt put on just for the camera."
5."I worked with a few influencers who, like one who is a Twitch girl, became flight attendants at my airline. I've been a flight attendant for 14 years, and the influx of these girls is annoying. They're constantly filming and taking pictures, even during critical phases of flight (aka when we aren't allowed to have our personal devices on) — totally out-of-touch goofballs. Super lazy, too. When the cellphone cameras are off, the work ethic is gone."
"The egos crack me up. Also, one of them is almost unrecognizable from her filtered/photoshopped photos. I don't know who these people are online, I just know from my other coworkers. I don't care what you do online, please just do your job."
6."My friend did a stint with a HUGE Twitch streamer who has a history of being controversial. To the surprise of no one, he was a juvenile, self-absorbed prick."
7."I grew up with @FatCarrieBradshaw (Chris Burns), and I will say that he is the kindest, funniest, and most inclusive person ever."
"Truly a good egg and deserves all the good fortune in the world."
8."I have a friend whose dog has a modest following on Instagram (about 20k). It's shocking how much work goes into running the account. Like, once she went on vacation and had her dog sitter send photos every day to be posted."
"And she goes to dog-themed events all the time to network with other dog accounts. But also, they occasionally get free stuff."
9."I shared a crashpad with a girl who had a decent Instagram following in 2015. No clue if she does now or not. She somehow would get away with not paying for the crashpad, and not paying for dinner, and she was wildly immature about relationships. I heard she was super difficult to work with on the plane."
"There was always some sort of way to put off actually paying for things, and it was clear she only worried about being the center of attention. Made me realize quickly that people's persona online (very thoughtful, caring for others) can be absolute BS."
10."My aunt's sister is best friends with Ms. Rachel and has been since high school. She is really that sweet IRL and is perfectly lovely!"
11."I know one whom I went to school with who has, like, 10k followers who is constantly asking places for freebies (her engagement is really low — sometimes 10 likes with 1 or 2 comments)."
"However, at work, an influencer who has 3.2 million followers called and made a booking, never asked for a freebie, paid, and did the tour happily. She was super low-key. She even posted it on her stories afterwards. No one asked her to. She didn't get paid to do it or anything."
12."I used to work with an influencer whose whole persona was 'girl boss' and 'hustle culture,' and girls looked up to her for that. She would show up to work just to take selfies then leave."
13."Had one for a roomie. She lied literally all the time about even silly little things. She would walk around town getting on other people's cars pretending she was balling."
"It was such a miserable experience."
14."I used to work on the business retail side of cosmetics, and L'Oréal came to us with an influencer deal (a French-speaking influencer with about 1 to 2 million followers). They created her own 'line' of lipsticks. To be frank, the lipsticks kinda sucked. There were only two colors, and they were just the normal collection but with her name on it. I don't remember ONE color being exclusive. The launch was a really big deal. One of our stores was closed so that she could do a signing and take photos with fans. I remember my colleagues being super excited about it. She was nice to the staff, and the event went well. But the 'line' was a total flop. L'Oréal ordered way too many lipsticks, and no one wanted them. We probably sold a quarter of the quantity ordered."
"My company had exclusivity, too. We ended up having to put the lipsticks on sale, but even then, they didn't leave the stores.
I remember pretty heated arguments between the L'Oréal reps and my boss to get rid of them, and my boss shouting, 'Who the fuck is this influencer?'
We ended up shipping all of them back to L'Oréal, and I think they destroyed them. Pretty wasteful.
I know this influencer has since released another lip product collection with another brand, and I'm pretty sure it didn't go much better."
15."I've worked with a handful of influencers in a very specific niche, so most of them didn't have a huge following. One had a million followers, and that was by far the biggest account. They were all nice enough, but every single one required so many follow-ups, reminders, check-ins, and general handholding. All posts/videos ended up having typos or incorrect info, like none of them took a minute to check the material we provided."
"The 1M account was by far the worst in terms of excuse after excuse for not getting anything done, plus it was a family-style account heavily focused on one of their kids, so that gave me the ick.
Anyway, I realized I do not want to work with influencers after that experience."
16."I was ex-best friends with two sister influencers who are popular on every social media platform (millions of followers each). They've been popular since Musical.ly. Basically, we were best friends for like seven years, and I supported them and went to stupid influencer events with them (like VidCon) and film premieres. I got noticed eventually, and people would literally come up to me saying, 'Oh are you X and Y's friend?' because I was featured in their content sometimes. Basically, we had a falling out this year after a near-decade friendship because they kept canceling on me to film/edit content (THAT IS COMPLETELY OPTIONAL)."
"They would choose a date and time, and then as I was going to pick them up, they would cancel, saying, 'I really want to put this vid out tomorrow, sorry!' It pissed me off, and I felt completely disrespected and disregarded.
One time, one of the sisters in particular wanted to bring her laptop to edit a new YouTube video at a club, and I was dumbfounded. And we couldn't go anywhere without them being spotted and asked for photos, which is fine, but kind of annoying and inconvenient because I ALWAYS took the photos, and I just wanted to be alone.
Anyway, being around influencers for seven years (and not being one myself) taught me that they're all entitled, they have fake personas, their friendships/relationships on social media aren't real, they get paid a shitload of money to do a two-minute sponsor, and they are ALL extremely out-of-touch.
Don't recommend. Lost my two best friends over fame."
17.And finally, "I've worked with TikTok influencers and Twitch streamers. My biggest gripe is that NONE OF THEM know how to respond to an email in a timely manner."
Do you have any memorable experiences with influencers IRL — negative or positive? Share them in the comments!
Some entries have been edited for length/clarity.
