The rise of social media ‘twinfluencers’
No, you’re not seeing double – social media is flooded with identical siblings,and they’re making a fortune, finds Helen Chandler-wilde
Is it just me or are online influencers doubling in number? No surprise, perhaps, given the rise of “twinfluencers” – identical twin influencers flooding social media. Flocking largely to Instagram and Youtube, they often play up to their sameness for the audience’s amusement: dancing and singing in sync, trying two different make-up looks at once.
“Twins are fascinating, I do get it,” says Niki Albon, a 27-year-old from Canvey Island, Essex, who runs two Youtube channels with his twin, Sammy. “Two humans who look and think the same; it’s interesting.”
In 2017, nearly 11,000 sets of twins were born in the UK – around 1.5 per cent of births. The chance of having identical twins is the same for all women, around one in 250, as it does not run in families.
The Albon brothers do differentiate themselves with subtly different styles and haircuts, but their resemblance is so striking they have 200,000 subscribers on Youtube, which makes it popular enough to run the channel as a full-time job, and their prominence has led to presenting slots on Radio 1.
“Psychologically, people like to see mirrors of stuff,” says Nico Cary, of Influentially, an influencer management firm.
This is nothing new. Humans have been fascinated by twins since Romulus and Remus. Pop culture has always had an appetite for seeing double: Mary-kate and Ashley Olsen were successful in the Nineties, and run fashion label The Row today, while Jedward are still remembered a decade after The X Factor.
Twinfluencers are now in on the
act and, able to analyse the popularity of their pages, cam tailor-make content. “When we dress exactly the same on our Instagram, it is much more popular,” explains Ayse Clark, 24, who runs a Youtube channel full-time with sister Zeliha from their Norwich home.
The pair are strikingly similar, even for twins. They keep their dark brown hair long, and combed into a centre parting with no fringe. And then there are the clothes – one of their videos, in which they visit Primark, has been viewed 165,000 times.
“We went shopping today and we just bought everything the same,” says Ayse. “We do have the same sense of style.” They appear to have similar taste in men, as well – each has a boyfriend called Ben, both of whose middle name is James. The four of them live together, and recently all holidayed in Malta.
It may all sound like overload, but twins are a social media gold mine, where duos’ natural ural chemistry makes for engaging viewing.
“It’s like having a wingman,” explains Nico. “Engagement is higher because you get two personalities.”
This is certainly true for Niki and Sammy, who found that their r videos as a pair were more popular than Niki’s initial solo attempts. Their performance is so seamless it looks scripted. “Having the same mind helps as presenters because of the nonverbal communication,” says Sammy, something in which they are well versed as, like many twins, they had their own language as children.
Ironically, the sameness of twins helps them be distinctive in an increasingly saturated market. “It’s a niche, and people are running out of niches,” says Nico. Niki and Sammy have sought to stand out by making a second channel centring on Korean pop music. “Everyone has their USP and ours is that we’re twins that like K-pop,” Niki says.
Having a twin around also helps influencers to stay sane in a job that could otherwise mean being alone all day, talking to strangers online. Without someone else there, it’s easy to find yourself on a negative mindset – a slave to an algorithm that doesn’t care about you,” says Sammy.
Ayse and Zeliha agree. “It’s nice not doing it on your own,” says Ayse. The pair “love being twins” and claim to never get sick of each other, despite living and working together. And they are not just twinfluencers, but twin twinfluencers. They have 17-year-old identical sisters, Ceylan and Ceyda, who sometimes make appearances in their videos. This double mirror image is difficult to take in visually, especially when you know the odds of this is 1 in 52,000.
A double dose of twins has also proved popular for Victoria Morrell’s Instagram @mama_and_the_peas, where she posts about her five sons, who include two sets of identical twins. The pairs, aged six and one, are usually dressed similarly, if not exactly the same, with her threeyear-old slotting in between.
“I think I’m more popular because I’ve had the two sets of twins,” says Morrell, 35, who is on a break from her career as a solicitor. She says she started the page to show that it is possible to look after five children.
“My inbox goes crazy every evening with people asking for advice. It’s so hard to get out of the house when you have twins,” says Morrell, who looks after the children while her accountant husband is at work. “If you go out you’re like a circus show. You’re ‘the one with the twins’. Then if you’re doing well, people step away because you’re coping with twins and they’re not coping with one.”
Companies are also more enthusiastic: keen to get in on the audience of followers she has built – twice. Clothing, buggy and crockery brands send Morrell products to try out, while out and about, “people come up and take pictures”, she says. “On a trip to London this week, tourists would come over and go crazy.”
And beyond those interested in the optics alone, scientists want to know more about how Morell has produced such a phenomenon – so much so that she and her husband have been asked to donate eggs and sperm in order to guide further research.
“I am fascinated,” she concedes of her multiple-twin set-up. “I still can’t believe it happened, myself.”