Many of us probably follow at least one or two influencers whose content we enjoy. Maybe you've been a fan of someone since their Myspace days, or you recently found a TikToker who's just really relatable to you.
However, no matter how much you enjoy their content or how long you've been following someone, you most likely don't know them in real life — and what goes on behind the scenes may be way different than you expected.
Recently, I asked current and former influencers of the BuzzFeed Community (and people who know them IRL) to share their secrets and stories.
I've also included some answers from this Reddit thread.
Here are 19 of their top answers:
1. "I worked for a 'girl boss' influencer who had her own beauty brand. While she was nice (sometimes), she was also a horrible boss. Low pay, no benefits. She made me drive her to a different city for a business meeting one time in her car (so she wouldn't have to pay me for gas), even though I told her I was uncomfortable with the idea. After a super long day, she made sure I drove her after to get seafood so she could eat, but she didn't offer to get me food. So I ended up asking her if it was ok if I stopped at McDonalds... I worked in marketing, but she was treating me like her personal assistant or something."
2. "I'm an influencer who lives in a pretty old apartment that hasn't been updated in years. My kitchen doesn't have fancy marble countertops, new cabinets, or even matching appliances. When I have to promote kitchen products, I finesse the entire thing by shooting on a desk and laying a marble print poster on top to look like I have nice countertops."
"Don't believe anything you see on social media."
3. "I work with beauty influencers in real life on a daily basis because I'm over digital marketing for a very large cosmetics/skincare company. We mostly work with people who have over 250K followers. I have yet to meet any that I can actually stand. The ones we have worked with are the most insufferable, demanding, unprofessional group of people I've ever seen — and their agents are often just as bad."
4. "I know two local ones in my area. One is horribly narcissistic and portrays the 'cool decor girl' with a great family vibe, but she's been cheating on her husband on and off for the past five years. It was her boss. They both lost their jobs over it, their partners knew, and they rekindled again. She'd had to have both kids paternity tested."
"The other was famous back in the day and is still going with kids. She preaches about her 'holistic and vegan' lifestyle, but she eats meat, cheese, you name it. She lives completely opposite of the life she portrays. So fake."
5. "A friend of mine was a fairly popular influencer, and I eventually had to stop seeing her. Any time we would go out for a drink, lunch, dinner, or anything, it would be about her taking a billion photos. I couldn't stand it. I would sit there and watch as she took the same selfie with a drink 500 times then would switch angles."
6. "Someone I am close to is a local 'micro-influencer.' She's a nice person and her personality is pretty much the same, but the part that irks me is planning and doing things specifically 'for the 'gram'. For example, one time we were on vacation together, and she wanted to go to a specific cafe just for the aesthetic. She bought a coffee, changed her outfit in the washroom (from sweats to a cute floral dress), took photos all around the cafe for half an hour, and then changed back into her sweats and threw out the coffee."
"She doesn't even drink coffee, just bought the cheapest thing on the menu to justify being there. That level of fakeness left a bad taste in my mouth."
7. "[My influencer friend's] online persona is one of extreme confidence and maturity. In real life, she is one of the most insecure people I've ever met. It seems like she isn't even living life because everything centers around taking the perfect pic or making videos for social media."
8. "I'm the manager of an Instagram influencer who has over 50,000 followers, and I usually get bitten at least once per photo shoot. That's because this influencer is actually my cat!"
"He's very food-motivated, so I bring his favorite treats (Inaba Churu squeezy treats) to our photoshoots to use as a bribe/reward, and he goes so wild for them that, in his excitement, he chomps my fingers a few times.
This is the case whether we're doing a photo shoot for a brand, our own merch, or a holiday or special occasion.
He'll always eagerly participate in the photo shoot because he wants to be wherever I am and involved in what I'm doing — but using the squeezy treats makes it more likely that he'll do what I want during the photo shoot, such as posing with an item or looking toward the camera.
If I get a really good shot of him looking toward the camera, it's often because I’ve just given him some of the treat and am holding the rest of it right above the camera. He might look like he's looking at the camera, but his eyes are really on that treat!
P.S. My feline influencer is Manny Halloween Cat — in addition to being on Instagram, he’s also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Lemon8, and Reddit!"
9. "I worked as an 'influencer' and was hired by a pretty major media brand. A lot of it was sales — I would cold call and network. After selling a brand on a marketing package, I would create content and advertise it through the bigger media brand. It was fun."
10. "I'm an Instagram influencer, and it can be a pretty 'small' world, meaning that you do have to box yourself into a specific niche in order to grow. I don't think an audience allows you to be multi-dimensional because people like to follow what they identify with."
"For example. If you're all about fitness and healthy eating, you can't just start talking about fast food without getting hate. Or if you are about minimalism and simple living, you can't then just start living this fast-paced, city life. Obviously, you CAN, but it will hurt your growth on a platform. And it can be draining to only showcase a third of a personality, when people have many different interests and likes."
11. "I think people only get to see one side of [my influencer friend]. I see the behind-the-scenes, which is the strategy and work that comes with curating an online image. So online, you see a world traveler who is beautiful, polished, and fashionable. In real life, she's so much more than that."
12. "A person I know became a mom influencer…And she wasn't even a mom...It's just wild."
13. "If you have a public profile, companies and brands can see WHICH location you post from without having your location tagged in the post. Therefore, if you post from a small town (let's say with 3,000 citizens), nobody will reach out, no matter how good your content is, because WHO is there to influence? But if you post from a bigger town (let's say 50K+) — your chances are pretty good."
14. "I was a micro-influencer. The only secrets I learned are that burnout is very real, and once you have a certain level of followers, people get weird. I stopped posting because people started to seemingly think I owed them attention back if they gave it to me."
"I was posting art, in the hopes of being a professional artist, and unfortunately, it really sucked the life out of me. I was making paintings for myself and sharing them because friends and family asked, but then I started getting other eyes in general.
At first, I hoped to build community and make friends with other artists, but things got a bit too transactional. People would demand I teach them, demand I make paintings for them, ask me to do things in specific ways, etc. I just felt like less than a person and like I was just a tool for other people's pleasure. I still paint, but I don't post about it now. I just hang them in my house. I always chuckle when people suggest I sell online...like yeah... it's not that simple."
15. "[The influencer I know] rents all of her clothes and bags and shoes and lives in a crappy house."
16. "I'm an influencer on TikTok making vintage recipes from my mom's collection (@momsrecipebox). I know many people say that it can be such a high-pressure, negative experience and really damaging to your mental health, but for me, it's been the exact opposite."
"All the love and positive comments are a massive serotonin boost, and during the pandemic, making videos was the only thing that kept me from collapsing into depression. I make very little money doing it, so my primary motivations are keeping my family's recipes alive and how good it makes me feel when people tell me they enjoy my content."
17. "A girl I went to high school with is an influencer, and honestly, she is pretty chill and down-to-earth. She's pretty much exactly the person she claims to be while influencing. She was always nice and good at photography and curating an aesthetic, so it isn't surprising to me that she is an influencer. I respect her because she is also incredibly intelligent and didn't give up her dreams for school. I know she works in a lab and has a serious job, which is more than I can say about myself."
18. "My cousin is an influencer in our small town in the Philippines. When we went on a Holy Land pilgrimage, he acted like a tourist but not a pilgrim. When we crossed the border to Egypt, our group was detained for two hours because my cousin wore his camera around his neck instead of stashing it in his luggage. His camera was confiscated in the end because, apparently, the lens he has is the type that can be used for spying, according to the Egyptian officials."
"He had to pay a $300 fine, and he was only able to retrieve his camera when we left the country through Cairo airport."
19. And finally: "[The influencer I used to work for] hires a lot of family to work for her but pays them less than she paid me. I got $13/hr, so go figure. One of her family members couldn't make ends meet, so he eventually had to start driving Uber on the side. Meanwhile, she buys herself an excess of Gucci, Chanel...you get the picture."
Are you a current or former influencer with stories and secrets of your own to share? Tell us about them in the comments or this anonymous form!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length/clarity.