'Mid-conversation they filmed a TikTok': 30+ Influencers who act totally different behind the scenes

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Mar 28, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

Oh man, some of these influencers are acting weird. Luckily for us, their friends are ready to tell the internet all about their odd habits, bad communication skills, and tendencies to film every little thing. 

The more that social media leeches into real life, the more it feels like The Truman Show, as people have recently been discussing on socials. Though there are a lot of people who run social media pages out of passion, a lot of other folks are just trying to make a quick buck. It's so strange to watch someone you went to high school with brag about her accomplishments, when you know the truth (she's flexing from her parent's kitchen, not her million-dollar house). Or maybe you start following an acquaintance online, only to realize they've already posted photos with you in them, without asking your permission ahead of time. 

There's only so much a person can film on social media before it starts to change their real life, as the friends of influencers will tell you. One story that really sticks out is a woman whose husband dumped her. She had a girls' night with her friends, and as they were listening to music, the woman suddenly filmed a video alone. Why? To make her ex jealous, of course! Her friends found that lack of boundaries off-putting, writing about how "uncomfortable it was to watch." 

Check out the wild world of TikTok fame and Instagram dog parents below. Then, read about the moments people knew they were ready to quit their terrible jobs. 

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  • 01
    HOR
    via Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
  • 02
    People who work with "Influencers" or have worked for, what were they like?
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    cymru_yesac No one well known, but I had a travel blogger friend who was filming while we were out one day - to celebrate my birthday - and then 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, ended up taking the whole video down, and our friendship ended there. So mildly insufferable, I'd say. Always "on" and engaging with social media, a lot of interactions felt put on just for the camera.
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    Danburyhouse Not work, but my distant cousins are a YouTube family channel. At our shared great- grandmothers 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."
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    Generic username1. I have a friend whose dog has a modest following on instagram (~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. So, not super interesting tea, but all I have to offer
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    MECHAMothrax Not worked for, but worked with. A few influencers, and 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. 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 cell phone cameras are off, the work ethic is gone. The
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    egos crack me up. Also one of them is almost unrecognizable from her filtered/shopped photos. I don't know who these people are online, I just know from my other co- workers. I don't care what you do online, please just do your job. Lmao.
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    Friend did a stint with a HUGE twitch streamer, has a history of being controversial. To the surprise of no one he was a juvenile self- absorbed
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    moppethead I know one that I went to school with like 10k followers who is constantly asking places for freebies (her engagement is really low - sometimes ten likes with one or two comments) and at work an influencer (3.2million followers) called and made a booking, never asked for a freebie, paid and did the tour happily and was super low key. She even posted it on her stories after (no one asked her to, she didn't get paid to do it or anything)
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    not worked for but was best friends with. very entitled, horrible time management, dirty, mean, master manipulator, had to be the center of attention in any room
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    speak-now6 SAME!!! was best friends with 2 sisters for 7 years that had millions of followers each on diff platforms. terrible experience. entitled, tone deaf, out of touch, centre of attention (!), inconsiderate
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    therealstabitha Completely disconnected from reality and zero self awareness
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    bbmarvelluv When one of my stylists was starting out, she worked on a ton of "influencers" aka Kylie's friends. Chantell Jefferies was chill and easy to work with, but Stassiebaby took forrrreveeeerrrrrrrr (like a year) to pay her.
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    Glum_Target2860. Not me, but I know a dude that used to run Vanilla Ice's website and fan club in the late 90s/early 2000s. Really nice dude. Had really good things to say about how he was treated by him and his crew. He did say Ice might blow a gasket if you said anything about his sister being hot lol.
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    Haunted Motorbike . 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
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    GravityBlues3346. Work related to influencers. I used to work on the business retail side of cosmetics and L'Oréal came to us with an influencer deal (French Speaking ~1-2M followers). They created her own "line" of lipsticks. To be frank, the lipsticks kinda sucked. There were only 2 colors and they were just the normal collection but with her name on it. I don't remember ONE color being exclusive.
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    The launch was a really big deal. One of our store was closed so that she could do signing and and photos with fans. I remember my colleagues being super excited about it. AFAIK, 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 just no one wanted them them. I don't remember the sales number, but we probably sold 1/4 of the quantity ordered. My company had exclusivity too.
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    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'Oreal reps and my boss to get rid of them and my boss shouting "who the 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.
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    Edit to add that obviously, this whole stint was presented as super cool, and that it sold so well and whatnot. But on the business side, it was a pretty deal.
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    magic__unicorn Not exactly influencers but I used to create a lot of recipe and photo content for food bloggers, and a few were larger more well known ones. Most of them were kind and easy to work with!
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    helloviolaine Niche but I went to school with German lifestyle blogger (I guess? she posts about her furniture and stuff lol) Elbgestöber. She was the meanest most horrible bully I've ever met.
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    ffantasticman I was working as an art director for a company and we used a few local influencers for a campaign. They were actually very lovely to work with. They were professional, friendly, and took directions really well. They knew what they were doing in front of the camera. I was surprised by how different some of their personalities were compared to what you saw on their social media. These were influencers with followers ranging from 50k to 200k+.
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    vagueposter A few years back, there was a very small one that came to where I worked, walked around with my boss for a bit, and he basically just talked at everyone for 10ish minutes. As soon as he left, my boss looked at me completely baffled and said, "I don't know what that guy was even talking about."
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    Comprehensive Horse30. it's similar to snapchat girlies behavior. constant filming, constant finding their light, always asking for photos, editing.... it's almost like you aren't in the room sometimes. or your a prop. last one i hung out with i straight up said "hey can we just do a little time without our phones?" and she looked at me like i was crazy
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    everything is for sale- every moment is a opportunity. i find it exhausting. (ofc some influencers are not this way but all the ones i've met, won't pass up any opportunity for a photo op/ are painfully aware that if they aren't actively engaging with their fan base they become yesterdays news). i know some cool "content creators" that are very chill and lowkey. but they aren't featured
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    LindaBurgers 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 jfc every single one required so many follow ups, reminders, check ins, general handholding, etc. All posts/videos ended up having typos or incorrect info, like none of them took a minute to check the material we provided.
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    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 lol
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    nikesoccer4 My aunt's sister is best friends with Miss Rachel and has been since high school. She is really that sweet IRL and is perfectly lovely!
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    speak-now6 Was ex-best friends with two sister influencers that are popular on every social media (millions+ following each) platform who have been popular since musically. Basically we were best friends for like 7 years and I supported them and went to stupid influencer events with them (like VidCon) and film premiers. I got noticed eventually and people would literally come up to me saying "ohh are you x and y friend?" (because I was featured in their content sometimes).
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    Basically...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 & time and then as I'm going to pick them up, they would cancel saying "I really want to put this vid out tomorrow sorry!". It Ime 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. A
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  • 31
    ALWAYS took the photos and I just wanted to be alone. Anyway, being around influencers for 7 years (and not being one myself) taught me that they're all entitled, fake personas, friendships/relationships on social media aren't real, they get paid a load of money to do a 2 minute sponsor and they are ALL tone deaf and extremely out of touch. Don't recommend. Lost my two best friends over fame
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  • 32
    I worked for years as an assistant to someone with around 500k instagram followers. Not a beauty influencer or anything but something pretty niche, and she was middle aged. She would constantly get sent SO MUCH free ...... She didn't know what to do with it or even look at half the stuff. She gave me stuff all the time lol. Also sometimes she would message or email random (large) companies to ask for free stuff if she wanted something specific. Usually they would say yes. One time she got a $5k
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    Otherwise she was pretty normal but definitely out of touch. (Think, "it's one banana Michael what could it cost? $10?") Also having to help with filming reels, it would be funny to see the final post, looking so casual and unscripted. But in reality we did like 10 shots of the exact same sentence/redoing the scene. For example unboxing something.
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    [deleted] I have a friend with close to 200,000 followers and another with 20,000 followers. The one with 200,000 followers is really nice. She gets to travel everywhere (international travel). She gets loads of free skincare products, makeup items and outfits. She does make an effort to put out engaging travel content. But, she is also so careful about anything that she says that i don't even know what is real about her and what is not. Despite all the perks, i do not want her life.
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    bunny-q i used to work with an influencer who's whole persona was "girl boss" "hustle culture" and girls looked up to her for that. she would show up to work just to take selfies then leave Imao.
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    mp6521 I've worked service for nearly a decade, a lot in LA, and every time an "influencer" comes through they are absolutely insufferable, demanding, , and never tip.
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    crestfallen_castle. I work with a mommy blogger. They get free cakes, free vacations, books, kitchen equipment. She's a bit of a ditz at work when you cross paths with her but she somehow never forgets stuff when it would help her project. I think it's deeply unethical to feature your kids on a public Instagram but hey, she's never asked me my opinion.
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    _ prestooo__ · I've worked with dozens of top tier influencers (1m+ followers, lame metric but you get what I'm saying) during my time at a weho podcast network. I was managing a creative dept and typically did ~2 hr promo shoots with anyone notable that came through the studio. I can honestly say the vast majority of them were perfectly fine people. I'd go as far as to say I like a lot of them. In my experience, it's not the influencers who were difficult, it was the C-listers/A-Listers of yest
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    cuddlepot I've worked on projects with many of them over the years and can wholeheartedly say none I've encountered are impressive, nice, smart, or professional. None of them even look remotely like their pics either. They're all spoiled brats with no talent and bad manners. Similarly, influencer managers and agencies are just as bad, if not worse.
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    Sissimoom123 I once worked with an influencer and regret it. She came 30 minutes too late and when I asked her what happend she said "I wanted to sleep". We went to a restaurant and she behaved like a Karen. For example: She orded a salad with bacon and when the waiter gave it to her she screamed and said "I didn't oder Bacon". But the one thing that left me in shock was when we went to an event. She filmed a video for her channel and was nice and good to everyone but after turning off the camer
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    Eating_Bagels My friend owns a marketing company, and he said it's awful and has since refused to work with influencers. From what he told me, the influencers themselves are not terrible (albeit, from his words, some are completely entitled). He would tell them a campaign and they either loved it and were down, or not and he would move on.
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    For those who said yes to working with him, the issues arose with the management teams. He said that the management would try to gauge more money from him, acted like their client was the hottest celeb in the world, or would completely disregard the influencers requests and tell him their client was stupid and they could no longer interact with the person.
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    type-HummusAmeriCAN. I used to work with a few YouTube celebrities. For the most part, they were all great guys. At conventions and things like that people would line up for hours to meet them, and they were always gracious and thankful to their fans. Their kids in the other hand were all entitled little
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    OddIndependence2674. I have a friend who works for a big twitch streamer and the streamer is very toxic as well as most of the streamers they've met. Not gonna reveal anymore don't wanna get them in trouble
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  • 45
    LaurenBZ I live next to an influencer who markets herself as an entrepreneur and high end business coach (30K followers). Meanwhile, she never tells anyone that she still has her office job and her parents are paying her bills AND clean her house every week. She is 30 and healthy, I don't see why she can't clean herself. But hey, another post with an expensive bag or car coming up in 3-2-1...
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    Egregious Philbin24 My former job worked with celebrities from all forms of media. This was before "influencers." Back then it was just YouTubers. But of everyone we worked with, YouTubers were almost always the worst. I worked with one whose name I can't remember but she played an abuela character and she was great. Quick, polite, very fast shoot. But my friend worked with Tyler Oakley and his mom and said they were complete
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    360Saturn I can share one little thing; often if they are an account that promotes something they will be promoting something that belongs to someone they know. e.g. if they do a 'my top 5' etc. video or clip then one thing in there will be the particular thing they are actually making the video to promote and (it might be changed now idk) they don't have to class it as a paid promotion or advertising doing it in this format.
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  • 48
    For example I know an influencer who constantly 'just happens' to like things sold by her husband's company and they always make it into her top purchases of that month or that season, not that she ever mentions the connection.
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    kimjongunfiltered. I work in a desk job with a minor influencer (ie, influencing is her lucrative side hustle). She's not a bad or mean person, but she definitely has an inflated sense of self importance, and of her own intelligence. Like she's not a stupid person by any means, but she is convinced she got her IG following from her business acumen when she really doesn't have a strong understanding of how social media platforms work.
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    There's no way to say this without sounding like a bitter hater but I've thought more than once that getting wrinkles is going to be verrrrry hard on her (and others like her).
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    snailslimeandbeespit My friend is an entertainment attorney who has represented several "influencers" as clients. She says they're worse than the musicians and actors and other public figures she's had as clients. She couldn't disclose names or specific details, honestly, but just said that most of the ones she's worked with have huge egos and a strong sense of entitlement.
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  • 52
    fakewhiteshark I worked in ecotourism. 9/10 of them are truly the worst of the worst. So disrespectful. Most ppl are out of their element where I worked so that would curb the egos pretty easily. The 1/10 who were respectful were really enjoyable to have around
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  • 53
    singledxout I had a friend who was a microinfluencer. I don't think she made money from her IG, but she got free makeup and haircuts. She was like the Taylor character in Ingrid Goes West but not as insufferable. Her soon-to-be ex-husband was an though just like Taylor's brother in the movie.
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  • 54
    Being her friend was an interesting experience. I definitely saw how pretty privilege affects people and what it's like being the designated ugly fat friend (the DUFF). Even as her friend, I benefitted from some perks like people just treating me better. She had a kid, lost a lot of followers, and has attempted to do mommygram stuff.
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  • 55
    uomouniversale2 My relative married a medium-sized influencer, whose sibling has 100k+ IG followers, and invited many influencers to their wedding. I met this sibling at the wedding, and mid-conversation they filmed a TikTok, put back down the camera, and continued the conversation with me. It was shocking. I saw it posted the next day and I was just... floored. This
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  • 56
    influencer is entirely awful, seems like a deeply depressed person who will not take no for an answer, and is very handsy. I will say all the influencers I saw at the wedding (one has over 1M followers on IG) were absolutely stunning IRL. Unfairly pretty.
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  • 57
    [deleted] One of my former good friends is a decent sized influencer one of the weirdest moments of my life, and the moment I knew I was done being her friend: Her husband dumped her to pursue a younger woman (they were 30 at the time, the replacement was 19) and she was in total denial about it.
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  • 58
    We had a girls night to try and get her mind off it, we were listening to Fleetwood Mac, just lounging around and she got up and flipped her phone to selfie mode and recorded herself singing along and dancing to make him jealous. It is hard to describe how out of context and unhinged it was. She seemed almost manic. I couldn't believe how uncomfortable it was to watch.
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