The more I hear about the trials and weirdness of being an influencer, the more I decide that it is not a job for me.
From the outside, it looks like all you do all day is try products and pose for pictures with them. It seems like a pretty good gig.
As someone whose job description is basically “surf the internet and write about stuff you find,” I’m hardly one to talk.
But so much of an influencer’s job seems to be dealing with trolls and I’m just not into that.
Usually, trolls stick to rude comments.
Some can get dangerous, with swatting and doxing being the popular go-tos of the worst offenders.
Compared to those, what happened to 21-year-old Ali Resuta seems mostly just annoying.
The Arizona State University senior wasn’t taking her YouTube channel very seriously.
She told BuzzFeed News that it was mostly a way to vlog with her friends, but she thought she might focus more on it in the future.
But even though her channel is a hobby and has few subscribers, she’s already been trolled.
It started with an Instagram story.
Ali was enjoying a vacation in Hawaii when she shared a photo of herself in a bathing suit that she describes as “somewhat risqué.”
Later, she received an applause reaction to the pic, from a guy she knows has a girlfriend.
She called him on it and he said that the emoji was an accident as he was scrolling through friends’ stories.
She didn’t believe him and decided to share the exchange on Twitter.
Even though the tweet only got a handful of retweets and likes, it was enough to cause a number of random strangers to start replying and DMing her.
Now, I know I’ve accidentally hit the wrong emoji on a social media post before.
Gotta love it when you choose “haha” instead of “sad” when it’s really inappropriate!
But Ali knows the guy and seemed pretty sure that he was making excuses. She didn’t need to have strangers telling her off for pointing it out.
That’s how she ended up talking to a guy named Patrick.
They chatted a bit and then he asked for her Venmo details. If it seems odd for her to just give it to him, she told BuzzFeed News that it wasn’t uncommon.
“Men are weird and I’ve gotten a considerate amount of money from random dudes on the internet for no reason whatsoever,” she said.
“So, as you could see in the screenshot, I got pretty excited because I thought I was about to get some money.”
Can we take a moment to unpack this statement?
Like, is it really that normal for random dudes to just send girls money because reasons?
That both creeps me out and makes me wonder if I’m in the wrong line of work.
She didn’t get money, though. Instead, she got a payment request for $5.
She thought the burn was funny at first, sharing it on Twitter, but that just brought the rest of the trolls out.
After jokingly posting it to Twitter, the floodgates opened.
Ali began receiving a ton more messages and her Venmo was filled with spam payment requests from random people.
Though at least one guy did give her $5 for her trouble..
Still, it’s the hard way to learn about how being an influencer can be a minefield.
Due to the notoriety gained through the trolling, people have begun to latch onto other tweets and posts, just increasing the problem.
It seems to have hit her hard, but she’s got a good attitude about it. If this doesn’t completely scare her away from YouTube, she’ll be ready for trolling if it ever happens again.
h/t: BuzzFeed News
