I’m retiring from life as an accidental ‘influencer’
Becoming an online brand has a far darker side than people realise, explains Bella Younger
Iwasn’t familiar with the word “influencer” when I joined Instagram in 2015. But after three years, 131k followers and a book deal, I had become one. Which is why, when I closed down my Deliciously Stella account two weeks ago, my decision came as a shock to so many.
In the early days of social media, I divided the people on it into “those with lots of followers” – journalists, celebrities, fashion bloggers – and those only followed by their friends.
Enter me, along with everyone else I knew. My personal offerings had attracted 300 followers, and I was averaging a couple of likes for every picture of my lunch or my dog. But then Stella, my parody account taking aim at the “wellness warriors” splashed all over Instagram, came into existence and things snowballed by accident, I had become an “influencer”.
No longer a glimpse into the banality the world of a 27-year-old TV researcher, my posts had now rendered me a brand; entirely changing my life.
I had first dreamt up
Stella while preparing for a comedy show, and wanted to test whether I was funny elsewhere. At the time, we were in the first throes of the clean eating phenomenon: gluten was the enemy, and beach yoga was endemic. So I began posting my own spin on healthy living – Haribo fried eggs on sourdough, a handful of Quality Street at Christmas with the caption “seasonal produce” – and soon enough, magazines were hailing me as the “filthy antidote to eat clean”. With followers came influence, and with influence came opportunity. Brands started contacting me to create sponsored content; this was great, I thought. I had, after all, put much effort into curating my feed – why shouldn’t I be paid to do what was slowly becoming my full-time job? I quickly realised that my “influence” only lay in one area: castigating the wellness brigade meant people wanted to see me make jokes about grub and nothing else. I genuinely love food and make jokes for work – surely, I told myself as the requests from food and drinks brands flooded in, being paid to do both was a win-win, so I posted every day without fail, spending an inordinate number of hours in supermarket confectionery aisles hunting for junk food to snap. An image of a Viennetta in a NutriBullet racked up 4.2k likes; baguettes strapped to my stomach, in lieu of abs, reached 4.5k. Stella had what brands crave: authenticity, the influencer’s favourite buzzword. If you are relatable, people are more likely to trust you, and thus more likely to take your recommendation.
In spite of being a spoof account, Stella made people feel better about themselves and soon, I was giving interviews and writing pieces for newspapers and magazines in character. People couldn’t get enough. But by the end of my first year as an accidental influencer, the build-up of pressure to constantly perform reached fever pitch.
A weekend stay with my parents in Edinburgh began with me sobbing hysterically while going through airport security, dressed in a bikini and miniskirt (this was October) and ended with me living there for months, before landing in the Priory.
The rapid success of the account had led me to an intense state of panic – I worried endlessly about every upload, fearing that a day neglecting the account would lead the success I had built to come crashing down around me.
Doctors despaired as I skipped therapy to record a podcast, or start artfully arranging my next post. The fact I had become what I set out to mock was not lost on me.
After counselling and getting prescribed the right antidepressants, I was able to reach a stage where the idea of putting something on Instagram didn’t plunge me into total anguish. But the truth was that my heart was no longer in it.
You give your followers what they want, but at what cost?
For me, that had become too high. Which is why, a fortnight ago, I made the tough decision to rebrand – as myself. I want to make people laugh at my stories and silly posts about dogs and Harry Potter, but I want it to be as me, not Stella. I am so proud that she meant so much to so many people, but I’m glad I don’t have to be her any more.