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Since the advent of the influencer, social media has been divided.

Some follow them, and then there are those who want to wish them away for being pointless and generally irritating, especially when they demand free stuff, or go to places like Chernobyl to take provocative shots where people died.

Let us not forget the wistful #wanderlust pics of people who have probably never had an original thought in their lives contemplating nature.

Tourism New Zealand went so far as to launch a campaign trolling that lot.

I will concede that there are a few influencers out there who fell into it without meaning to. A couple of YouTubers, or Instagrammers just doing their thing, have inadvertently generated a fan base who want their opinions or recommendations.

Some YouTubers have even started attracting a fan base as anti-influencers, a phenomenon that VICE attributes to the pandemic.

Over the past few months, reality stars and popular Instagram influencers have been posting pictures of their holidays in locations like Bali, the Maldives, and Dubai.

YouTube creators, who usually post chats analysing internet culture, have responded to this by criticising said influencers in videos that have been going viral.

American YouTuber Tyler Oakley’s video titled Dear influencers partying during the pandemic…, has garnered upwards of 220 000 views.

Beauty vlogger Smokey Glow’s Let’s Talk About Influencer Entitlement and Accountability has upwards of 260 000 views:

There are plenty more out there, but we’ll round the examples off with D’angelo Wallace’s Influencer-19:

In the video above, Wallace looks at the dozens of influencers like Charli D’Amelio, Kim Kardashian, and Jake Paul, who have broken COVID-19 safety restrictions ‘for the ‘Gram’.

To quote a line from Keeping up with the Kardashians – “Kim, there’s people that are dying.”

The basic thread running through all of the anti-influencer videos is that continuing as if we aren’t in the middle of a pandemic is not only tone-deaf but also dangerous.

Tiffany Ferguson, a YouTuber who produces commentaries and reaction videos, reckons she knows why these sorts of videos have become so popular.

“I think many viewers want to watch influencers and creators that are self-aware and acknowledge the big issues going on ‘in the real world’,” Tiffany speculates.

“Sometimes we want escapism and light content, but a lot of us can’t stand to watch creators that seem to live in their own bubble, especially during this time when so many traumatic, painful things are happening.”

You can’t argue with that. Watching someone violate COVID-19 safety measures while you’re trapped in your house for the 100th consecutive day isn’t a vibe.

Head on over to the Instagram account ‘Influencers in the Wild‘ if you want to have a bit of a laugh at how some of those glamour shots are actually captured.

And, yes, you could just unfollow the people who are acting like morons on social media and leave it at that – but hearing someone rant about them is just so satisfying.

[source:vice]