easy for you to say
what's with all these privileged influencers acting so (emotionally) impoverished when they're not really giving up anything? must be nice...
Influencers, aka content creators, whether they’re just existing — spread-eagled in a bikini by the pool — or pushing a certain lifestyle or niche (travel, beauty, family, politics), all seem to have a sensitivity chip missing from all that showing off for public consumption.
The hits keep coming…
I was watching a very popular food vlogger on YouTube whine in that lyrical Gen Z way about moving to Madrid, Spain with her Danish chef boyfriend far from her doting parents in South Korea. She gave off the impression that she was never going back, or at the very least, only able to visit occasionally, like every few years.
Like this was some huge hardship. You’d think she was being drafted into the military in the middle of war-torn Siberia.
Call me a dementia Boomer, but for a second there, she had me convinced that she was suffering horribly, because she was leaving everything she knew and loved behind to make a new life for herself in Madrid or whatever.
Maybe in her mind, she was. Maybe two months is an eternity to kids these days, I don’t know, but before you could say tteok-boki, she was back on YouTube traipsing around Thailand, moaning over som tum papaya salad, and then, THEN!, back in South Korea, living with her parents until her and her boyfriend’s apartment had been completely renovated.
Oh, that.
From what I hear, it’s not cheap living anywhere in Spain, least of all for locals who can trace their ancestors to way before the 20th century.
This privileged influencer’s apartment looks expensive, as is. I wouldn’t change a thing. But she and her boyfriend are planning to completely re-do the kitchen, add more shelving, storage, blah blah blah.
She makes that much selling aprons and chef knives?!
By all online appearances, she went from Thailand, back to Korea, and San Francisco’s Mission District in the span of five months.
I wouldn’t necessarily call that suffering, like the rest of us. I’d call that privilege.
Remember “Jinny’s Kitchen, Season 2?” How the hell can all those Asian — and that one Brazilian — tourists fly to Iceland just to eat at that pop-up restaurant? Traveling for shorter durations is all the rage among vloggers now. One of my son’s friends said it’s probably because they can’t afford a longer stay. But to me, a longer stay is worth more.
An ordinary food and travel vlogging couple uses the husband’s airline job to fly to Tokyo for a 48 hours, or Maui just to eat at this one restaurant they’ve been hearing about. Are they cheap, or stupid?
In my day, nobody went on vacation, other than the very rich. Vacation was a Saturday at Ft. DeRussy beach. If we saved up enough, we’d go to our favorite destinations for a week minimum, but preferably two, just to get our money’s worth.
Another influencer on Instagram always posts half-naked pictures of herself after a miscarriage. I guess it’s her idea of coping, a Gen Z thing. Whatever gets you through the night, honey. (I’ve had a miscarriage, don’t give me grief, I’m just observing weirdness.)
“Her running theme is getting bored with her life and making irrational decisions (i.e going to different countries on a whim to temporarily forget about her struggles). Any time she has a hardship she runs for the nearest exit and I hope that she didn’t make Kevin work the restaurant AND film her videos while the restaurant was struggling just for her own personal gain…” — Strawberry-425, a year ago, reddit
She’ll occasionally go on about her private suffering, in cryptic, lyrical, Gen Z notes, but then chirp about the lake house she and her famous reality-TV podcaster husband are building out in the country and recommend all sorts of clothes, toys, and home decor products that only the upper 1% can afford.
I know, I looked up a moisturizer. Holy cow, no thanks.
Let’s not forget everyone’s whipping post — the multi-million-dollar trad wife, Hannah Neeleman. She makes life on her Ballerina Farm look easy-breezy and oh-so-accessible to plebs like you and me.
An enamel sourdough bowl goes for $75.
Everything this woman does is for sale, from her gauzy day-in-the-life to her recent stay in Ireland to attend a bespoke culinary school, to jogging in the Irish countryside after a hard day’s work learning to make custard.
On a related note, I couldn’t help but feel petty as hell when another YouTube food vlogging couple based in Hawaii spent over a month in the guy’s native Vietnam, making bug eyes and pursing big, greasy lips over that country’s native delights.
Vietnam’s cool and all, but if you love it so much, why don’t you guys move back and give the native Hawaiians a chance at a new, affordable lottery housing? Yeah, that came out of my mouth.
Could all of this be envy on my part? Maybe. Or maybe I’m grossed out by people acting like their lives are like yours and mine when they’re clearly not.
Enjoy your mission-style burrito all you like, but don’t tell me you’re going through some fucking hardship when you can go back to mommy and daddy any time.
What does hardship even mean to kids like you?
Homesick? How about not ever being able to go back, because you’re poor and destitute, and everyone you’ve ever loved has died, and oh, the tyrannical government killed them all?
Girl, you get to travel all over the world and go back home whenever the fuck you want. You never have to really see if you have what it takes to make it anywhere.
Princess is probably going to play house in Spain for a year, or as long as the lease holds out, then back to mommy and daddy’s safety net, long enough to film another sob story about moving away for clicks, likes, subscribes, and loving, supportive comments from strangers (who do more for their favorite, famous influencers than they would their own families).
The preciousness of these Gen Z influencers kills me. What happens when there’s a nuclear world war, the next Depression, the same hyper-inflated Weimar Republic post-WWI — precursor to the WWII Holocaust just btw — Germans had to slog through, dragging wheelbarrows of gold for one loaf of bread…a real crisis?
They wouldn’t know what to do but stand there half-naked, twerking on their smartphones…
All these things…
‘…all these things I’ve been trying to get over, since I realized that they traumatized me in high school, including, I stomp when I run…and she also told me I had an absurdly long wingspan, gorilla arms, I think she said?…”
I remember the day clearly. We were driving around the bend to my house in Mukilteo, it was after 8 p.m., when Becca compared her suffering to mine. She went on about how people made her feel fat and ugly growing up, turned to me, and said something to the effect of, I know how you feel.
Like her fat and ugly, and my flat-face, slant-eyed gook go back to eating dogs where you came from AND fat and ugly were absolutely on the same level.
She’s white, btw, blonde, and objectively beautiful. I, however, am nearly the polar opposite: not white, not blonde, not beautiful at all, and very, very Asian.
We’re not in the same boat.
The only thing we shared was our life-long struggle to lose weight, something both of us could do if we put our heads to it.
Only a privileged white person would compare feeling fat to racism.
Five minutes ago, I happened upon another privileged white, blonde woman nattering on in her IG story about all the things that traumatized her in high school. I’m sure they did. If I looked like her, with everything going for me, having a track star telling me I stomp when I run and my long arms look like a gorilla’s with its big wingspan would be very traumatic.
But don’t compare her trauma to mine. Mine’s deeper…worse.
It’s insulting to people whose ancestors suffered institutional racism to the point of near-annihilation, colonial displacement, Manifest Destiny, slavery. To me, it’s the equivalent of rich, white people on a yacht joking, “I wonder what the poor people are doing right now.”
Personally, I hate the comparison game. I try like hell to avoid it at all costs.
Just don’t tell me your white-privileged suffering is the same as mine. It lowers your standards and integrity, and makes you look shallow.
Try walking a mile in my shoes, then come back to me about your — boo hoo — stomping gorilla wingspan. I’d kill to be traumatized like that.