"In 2020, she lost her apartment, her car, and still hasn't found a job, but calls herself a professional influencer all the same..."

"Fast forward a couple of years, and she got engaged, which 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, only demands — demands for expensive trips and expensive parties and all kinds of things that were above and beyond the means of her closest friends. Yet all the demands were made because she had a 'following' and had to meet certain expectations.

It was 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 in the few photos she ended up sharing. And, true to the weird, strange, rewritten reality she had, she published a public 'apology' on her blog for her followers and family that completely distorted what happened, painted herself as the victim, and got her the sympathy points she was looking for.

People really lose themselves when they create an artifice for social media — I learned a lot from her."

"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 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.'"

"She's actually chronically unemployed, and has an income of less than $10k/yr. Her boyfriend makes about $60k/yr, which is enough to afford them a very nice 3.5-bedroom apartment, and she has tons of props she uses to make each room look different from day to day, so it seems like she's always in a new, exotic place. They take two trips a year to fun, tropical places, where she takes many photos, and posts them as being different places throughout the year.

She's a very kind, considerate, sparkling personality, but whenever we hang out, I tend to be a shoulder to cry on as she laments about her lack of success in life. It's quite sad, honestly, but with her creativity and personality, I think she'll achieve her dreams eventually."

"Firstly, the photos are photoshopped massively, secondly, he’s not a qualified PT so he could very easily get sued for giving out workout plans, and his financial advice? It’s him convincing people to join his online trading (scam). But when you raise any of this to him, he claims you're jealous of his success. Yes, I’m really jealous that I’m not so insecure that I have to Photoshop pictures and have my parents buy my car for me.

He’s also banned from one of the UK's most popular gym chains for threatening and trying to fight the staff because he didn’t want to follow the COVID guidelines when they were open. All in all, he went from someone whom I found it difficult to speak to because he was awkward, to social media being his life and turning him into a prick."

"Vegan on Instagram by night, testing on animals for money by day. Go figure."

"Also, her insistence that she's working harder than anyone else is annoying. She's forever claiming that everyone else has it easy compared to her because she's an entrepreneur.

The friendship is steadily diminishing on that front, and is now more of a distant acquaintanceship. It's a pity, she was one of my best friends for years before she fell into this nonsense."

"And this sounds so petty, but she could never show up in comfortable clothes (because photos, obviously) to activities like sleepovers and movie nights because they had to be a big production. Sometimes you simply want to eat popcorn and look like a slob — it's good for the soul!

She'd also complain a lot about how hard her job was. Our friendship group at the time consisted of an EMT, two nurses, a teacher, and me, juggling college, tutoring, and a retail job. I'm sure she had her own challenges and all jobs are hard sometimes, but she literally got paid to take selfies with free stuff, and show up at events looking pretty..."

"She spends a disturbing amount of time taking photos of herself and on Instagram... We had a conversation once where I expressed my concern because it's such a toxic platform, and I was worried about her, but she's very confident in herself (and she should be! She's gorgeous and has a very funky style). But she's fallen into the trap of editing her skin in photos despite having amazing skin. I told her she doesn't need to, but she says she doesn't get the same likes if she doesn't, which is really sad...

I had to talk her out of giving some random guy her home address to send her free stuff. I was adamant that it was an incredibly bad idea to give some random middle-aged man her home address, and if she really wants free stuff from him, she should get it sent to a post office. She listened to me in the end and didn't get anything off him, and I was so relieved she actually listened. I had such a gut-wrenching, terrible feeling about it.

The bottom line is, I worry about her. She's genuinely a sweet and funny girl, and I don't think there's a malicious bone in her body. I wish the best for her, and I don't want her to fall into the traps a lot of influencers do, where they live for the likes and heavily edit themselves in photos."

"We got into an argument a while ago, and she won’t own up to any of her BS, but part of me feels sorry for her because of the way she was raised — she quite obviously hates herself as much as she hates everyone else."

"It dominates everything he does, and has severely impacted his personal relationships. He can't keep a girlfriend, and it's clearly related to his social media obsession. He does occasionally get some cool stuff out of it, though.

After practically kicking him out of my life because I don't want to be continually posted online, we've agreed that when he's about to take a picture or video, he hands me the phone so I'm not in the shot, and that works OK for me."

"She simply does it because it's the only way she can make money. She dropped out of school, and endorsing products and taking pictures of herself is how she pays rent.

IRL, she's basically the complete opposite of the happy, bubbly, ditzy girl she plays online, and we often laugh over some of the messages she receives, including proposals and women angry that their sons/husbands are following her."

"In 2020, she lost her apartment, her car, and still hasn't found a job, but calls herself a professional influencer all the same."

"Anyway, she got a cute ass dog who became Instagram famous. Eventually, she took over the dog account and renamed it after herself. She traveled often, so the dog bounced around amongst friends. Last I heard, she completely ditched it and left him with her parents. All the while, she paid her way into VIP backstage passes for shows and pretended like she was best friends with the artists. She kept social climbing higher and higher with the help of unwholesome cash from her startup.

Now, from what I see, she only hangs out with other influencers and vapid people. She posts constantly about how successful she is, how expensive her things are, and how much she parties."

"However, some of the anecdotes she tells about 'struggling with fitting in' when she was a teen are blatant lies — she was popular, and every guy had a crush on her. I don’t want to undermine whatever internal struggle she faced, but when she tells stories about being bullied in high school, they’re lies.

She’s genuine about wanting to be positive for people, but I wish she did it a bit more honestly."

"It would take her 2–3 hours to put on makeup before leaving, and she was extremely conscious of how she looked in public, where we ate, etc. She was also very rude to waiters and very arrogant. 

Obviously, it ended quickly with her, and I feel she led a very shallow life."

"I was so self-aware of everything I was doing, knowing I could be shared on YouTube, and I became grumpy when she would pull out the camera so she wouldn’t film me.

Some of her fans used to like me and tell her to hang out with me, so she wanted us to do more videos together, but I avoided the topic. Eventually, she argued with my best friend and stopped hanging out with us, and then there was the drama of why she wasn’t hanging out with us. It was so annoying.

Thankfully, I was a quick phase in her video career, so I didn’t lose much!!"

"He boasts and brags about buying Bitcoin nearly every other week. He has missed multiple family get-togethers because he's 'working' too much, even though his work is mostly managing bodybuilders. Last I heard, he hasn't seen his parents in almost a year. 

He does a great job of pretending he's rich, and his clients eat it up! I just sit back and cringe — it's all smoke and mirrors."

Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.