“Sorry If Anyone Else Grows Up Like This” — Daughter of Influencer Says She Hates Mom's Lifestyle
"Theres been times I was told to reenact jokes I made later on because it wasn't caught on camera. I don't do it, but I wouldn't be shocked if those family channels would have their kids do so."
Published March 11 2024, 9:40 a.m. ET
Influencers are oft-maligned as being "modern-day Avon ladies," and for some, simply hearing the term is enough to make them recoil. Lambasted as inauthentic, lazy, and not contributing anything meaningful to society save for the perpetuation of an idea that self-glamorization / narcissism is a human quality worth venerating as a means of ballooning one's self-worth in the pursuit of fame for fame's sake.
And while, as is often the case when a swooping generalization is made about any group of people, these types of blanket statements don't apply to everyone in that group, this perception of Influencers, one may think to themselves, had to come from somewhere, and if this Redditor's story about their Influencer parent is true, this perception could very well derive from people like this.
In a now-archived post uploaded to the r/trueoffmychest sub, a user who posts under the name @AnnonymousCarrot penned a blog detailing how their 45-year-old mother has become an obsessive Influencer taking photos all of the time and live-streaming anywhere and everywhere she gets a chance to do so.
The woman's constant posting to social media has taken a toll on the 16-year-old, who says that while she "understand[s] the irony" of posting about her mom's constant pining for attention from internet strangers on Reddit, it seems that she was reaching out to strangers herself in order to unload her frustrations about her mom's choices.
The young girl then goes on to say that after she "declined" having a 16th birthday party her mother, instead, decided to launch a massive shindig she claimed was for her anniversary, OP's brother's graduation, and OP's birthday. However, the entire time the party was going on, OP claimed her mom was on her phone the entire time, streaming parts of it and sharing video clips with her friends.
Vacations are completely ruined by her mother's influencer behaviors, primarily by her mom's desire to get the "perfect shot" and it appears to have severely cut into her family's dynamic. Sitting or eating in places that aren't picturesque or make for a beautiful photo opportunity are shunned, OP says, with her mom hurrying them to finish eating so they can get to the next content-conducive shot.
This obsession will even have her mother engage in some annoying and what some may call inhumane practices — like the team she didn't eat for 10 hours and when she finally got to sit down and have some food, her mother made her pose with her meal before digging in so the imagery would look perfect for her followers.
Imagine traveling after a long day — you finally make it to your hotel room and all you want to do is throw your bags on the ground and plop on the bed. OP says that this is downright impossible with her mom as she wants to get a full shot of the hotel room before anyone else steps foot inside of it.
The tipping point, OP says, is when she was trying to get a drink of soda and was setting up the perfect ice to beverage that she enjoys. Her mother made her stage the shot to make it look all nice and pretty for the internet, leaving the young girl to have to "just wait until she was done."
All of this behavior, OP says has made her start to "envy" her mother's online following, because the woman puts so much attention and care into ensuring that strangers on the web are tended to and that their needs are being met, but she doesn't put that same kind of attention into tending to the emotional needs of her own family.
It's gotten to the point, the 16-year-old says, that she's even bothered to stop trying to ask her mom to spend time with her: "She goes off on my dad about how much closer I am with him than her, but I asked to watch a movie with her and she declines. Her reasoning is always that she has a livestream later she's hosting, or a video to film, or her followers are live. Shes turned me down so many times I stopped even trying to hang out with her, since if I do get her around she's on her phone. One time I asked for her opinion and she snapped that she was tired from her job," the young Reddit user wrote.
According to the teen, her mother also forces other family members to disconnect their devices from their house's WiFi if she's live streaming so that she can have a better connection. She also said that even when her mother shows up for her while she's engaging in activities that she enjoys, like dance class, even then, she's more concerned with her Influencerdom.
"The most attention she's given me recently was recorded, I was in a dance class and the only time she looked at me was when she was recording what I was doing. The instructor praised me to them for my work multiple times and she didn't even notice, I checked and she was watching a livestream," she writes.
The 16-year-old's post was re-uploaded to the site's r/BestOfReddit sub, where she provided further context about the situation, stating that while her father has asked her mother to cool down on the excessive posting, and that the family has taken to doing things without her, like sending her back on a train from the city so she could work on her less-than-minimum wage earnings from Influencerdom so they could watch a show together as a family sans mom.
She also added that she's not the only sibling who is upset by her behavior — her brother is starting to get peeved about the whole situation too.
The comments section of the post includes other insights into what life is like living under an Influencer parent: re-enacting jokes for the camera.
One user on the app came upon a great niche for online content: "The Child of an Influencer" recording her mom in the act of being an overbearing content monster.
