"try being an influencer for a day"

influencing and living in the moment

You may have seen the original video of influencer Mikayla Nogueira expressing the struggles of being an influencer. In the video, she voices the demanding lifestyle she lives as an influencer, stating, “Try being an influencer for a day.” As you can imagine, her video received backlash and countless hate comments and video responses, prompting Mikayla to take the video down. Users in the comments shared how working a 9-5 is normal, joked they’d happily switch lives with her, and deemed her complaints ridiculous. As a girl who has loved the media and making videos since I was young, being an influencer has always been at the back of my mind, but at what cost? Let’s discuss how influencers and social media draw us from living in the moment.

During this year’s spring break, I was determined to create content like an influencer. On the first day, I decided to make a vlog of my day, as many do on TikTok. Throughout the day, I was consumed with finding the perfect angles, capturing a clip before enjoying the first bite of my long-awaited meal, and was caught looking at the beautiful landscapes through my phone's camera. I re-watched the video at the end of the day, and naturally, it did not compete with enjoying the beauty of the things I was experiencing in real-time. These points may sound cliché until you try being an influencer for a day.

This experience led me to this topic today. The excitement of life we experience has declined since childhood, and maybe our parents were right…it is because of that damn phone. Our phone usage, whether it be scrolling on social media or focusing on getting the perfect picture or video, dims our life experiences. Influencers and their unrealistic lifestyles lead the general population to think we must all wear this or do that during our morning routine. We forget that being raw and authentic is typical.

Influencers play a role in our perception of daily life. Ask yourself - when shopping, do you buy that polka dot top because you think it’s cute or because that’s what “the girlies are wearing this summer”? Are you cooking the “Bella Hadid Pasta,” or is it just penne alla vodka? To me, our subconscious agreement with trends and influencer lifestyles is another factor that draws us from living in the moment.

When I think about my experience attempting to be an influencer for a day, I can understand the long-term effects of this lifestyle/profession. That being said, Mikayla’s argument can be considered valid. It’s stressful and mentally challenging to constantly be evaluated by strangers. Still, I think a more significant issue that we are ignoring is how consuming and tiring it must be to always have to document your life perfectly.

So maybe it’s not about having the perfect feed or a crazy amount of followers — could the real value just be enjoying life’s experiences even if there’s no post to prove it happened?