Pakistani Influencers: The good, the bad and the ugly

American artist Andy Warhol quite rightly said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”. Today, it’s never been easier to become an overnight sensation- all thanks to social media and the online entities that exist to reign over it.

From Facebook to Instagram, YouTube to TikTok; we have witnessed a mighty boom in the explosion of social media influencers who today have become more significant than celebrities. They are stars in their own realm, with thousands of fans and followers aspiring to be like them.

The glorious life of a social media influencer

To all these devotees, the world of influencers appears quite hunky-dory. Being one can get you free PRs, paid endorsements, sponsored trips to exotic locations, excess to all VIP events, and of course, can shop all the luxury for yourself at absolutely no cost.

You get to wear pretty clothes, get your hands on the best make-up, make dazzling transition videos, eat at the finest restaurants, get pampered at premium beauty salons and receive the appreciation of millions of internet users countrywide.

If you are even more lucky and talented, you can later make your way on T.V, or in cinemas and can even star in music videos of some of the biggest singers of the nation. Not to forget, you can also become a fashion model for top designer brands.

Sounds heavenly, right? Who wouldn’t want to walk in the shoes of an influencer and get all the moola along with the freebies while enjoying stardom? But trust us, it’s not all as rainbow and revenue as it sounds.

All it takes is just one wrong piece of advice or an opinion that gets shunned, allowing fans to cancel an influencer and his/her career forever.

The other side of the picture

Quite recently, a blogger from Karachi, Neha aka Rebellious Brownie posted a video of hate comments taken from a private women’s community on Facebook. While she intended to troll her trolls, she forgot that taking screenshots from a private group is considered a serious offense.

Instantly, an uproar began on her Instagram account and the respective community, with fellow women calling her out for violating the group’s privacy and taking screenshots. Neha apologized publicly for breaching privacy but the damage was done. Her image as a fashionista, who is proud of her dusky skin and encourages others to embrace themselves, went down the drain.

Another eye-witness account surfaced where a young girl revealed how the much-famous Karachi Blogger ‘Girl Gotta Eat’ remained mum when her friend called a waiter a ‘fool’ for slicing a piece of cake wrong at a local eatery.

According to Aymen:

I was at a restaurant the other day, for iftar where this famous blogger @girlgottaeat was with her friends as well, on the table next to ours. Out of nowhere, we heard a woman talking to one of the waiters in a very condescending manner. Telling him that he had no common sense and that he should at least use his brain. Apparently, they cut the birthday cake wrong and for this small reason, this very well-groomed lady on the outside, got so angry that she felt it was okay to belittle the waiter in front of everyone. During all this, both her friends accompanying her, one of whom being the blogger remained silent.

Moreover, upon apologizing, the waiter was again told how he should be sorry for doing such a stupid thing which ruined the cake.

Last year, a Lahore-based influencer Susan Khan got bashed for using lions as a prop at her birthday bash.

Back in 2020, popular Instagram voice Humna Raza took the initiative of selling her mental health journals, post the suicide of Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput. What followed was a social media upheaval with Humna stating that her followers will ‘butcher’ the people who are calling out to her.

Not to forget, Humna along with several Twitter bloggers got entangled in Ali Zafar- Meesha Shafi defamation case and eventually had to issue a public apology to the Rockstar singer for defaming him on social media sans evidence.

We all remember how Faysal Quraishi lost his cool when several TikTokers on his show indulged in horseplay and disrespected the decorum of his game show.

Or how can we forget Junaid Akram and the Snapchat screenshots that surfaced, accusing him of flirting with women outside his marriage!

Popular YouTuber Sham Idrees’s career faced a dramatic downfall when he and his wife Froggy faked an Islamophobia episode in a café in Canada. This was just one of the endless controversies he got himself landed in and eventually, people stopped giving him attention.

Such stories and episodes are endless-only proving the ugly side of being a social media influencer.

With great responsibility also comes cyber-bullying

Research says that 88% of people put the highest trust in recommendations from influencers they follow. 80% of consumers have bought something that was recommended by an influencer. This increases the level of impact a blogger, vlogger or a TikToker has on the internet users. After all, they are no less than their digital buddies who, unlike celebrities, share in-detail snippets of their life, often from their bedrooms.

Some of us might think that influencers have it all the easy way. But not all can handle fame so effortlessly and thus, get entangled in controversies.

The rest are subjected to cyber-bullying of the worst kind. We forget that content creation is indeed an art and is not everyone’s piece of cake. It requires immense courage to stand up in front of the tripod, get dolled up, think of innovative ways of creating entertaining content and expose your life to the world, only to get bullied and trolled in comments.

While every influencer has fans, some irksome keyboard warriors only exist to spread spite. Of course, the influencers make this bold choice to share their life with the world and should be prepared to bear the volleyball of verbal attacks that come their way.

Whether you see them as ‘winfluencers’ or ‘influenzas’; they are not vacating the digital sphere any time soon. There will continue to be social media stars who will be like mentors to us while there will be some who will fall from graces- revealing the dark side of an influencer life.