In our new social media age, many who live among us have accumulated great wealth and success by simply talking to their screens. 13 year olds have already superseded the wealth of adults three times their senior, just by filming themselves doing the latest TikTok trends. With such extravagant lifestyles, how valid is “influencer burnout?”
Despite the money and mass following, some creators claim to feel uninspired, unmotivated, and utterly miserable; no matter their social standing. Creators have taken to social media pages to discuss these feelings, inspiring intense discourse, especially amongst those whose lives are anything but lavish. The question I’m pondering is whether or not “influencer burnout” is valid, or whethers creators are just too out of touch to see the shallowness in their own struggles?
I’ve been a consistent social media user since I was around 10 years old. Popular Youtube creator Emma Chamberlain is someone I’ve looked up to for a very long time, and I greatly appreciate her and her content. That being said, I think when you’re someone online you put yourself in the limelight for criticism. I also think that discussing the behaviors of these individuals can only make everyone better, as we all learn how to be more respectful and empathetic people.
I first heard this idea of “influencer burnout” while listening to Emma Chamberlain’s podcast “Anything Goes.” Chamberlain describes the idea of burnout as “you overwork yourself and can’t do anything properly. You become uninspired.” Quotes like this have gone viral on TikTok with individuals relating to Chamberlain’s woes with sadness. Her quotes became the backtracks to sad anthems and melancholy sunsets that echo her woeful tone.
“It’s like, within the past week, I just am so burnt out with life that literally nothing makes me feel excited.”
Hundreds of Chamberlain supporters have clung onto these words and praised her for being so honest and vulnerable, while hundreds more have lashed out on her social media for her comments. TikTok user @allygordon12 used a popular audio and made a post that says “Trying to calculate how influencers are constantly “burnt out” when they literally get paid to live most people’s dream life, get free stuff all the time, and are on vacation every other week.”
User @issa_secretaccount3 had similar remarks targeted more specifically at Chamberlain, saying “I’ve never known a more complainy b***h than Emma Chamberlain. If this girl tries to cry to me one more time about how hard her life is while she lives in her 10 million dollar mansion and jets from country to country and has her pick of amazing business opportunities, I’m going to scream. I know money doesn’t buy happiness but people are living way worse and complain significantly less. Like other people have anxiety too but are trapped as Starbucks baristas in Iowa.”
I think the idea of money not buying happiness is really at the root of this problem. We all have been told this ideology since we were little, and when influencers are sending mixed messages online, smiling from their mansions while also telling us that they’re depressed, it becomes confusing. One can only guess which reality is actually the truth, or maybe influencers’ realities become so skewed around such immense wealth that they don’t even know. I think influencer burnout is valid, but creators are also out of touch, they truly live in a different world.
In an article written by Harper’s Magazine, writer and english professor Barrett Swanson published a story about his five day stay in the online creator house called the “Clubhouse.”
“For a moment, I cannot remember who I am or why I am sitting here amid this sea of beautiful young people, all of them desperate for recognition, their whole lives ahead of them, empty at the absolute center,” he writes. Creators are put on a pedestal like they aren’t normal people, which in turn makes them not the anti human, but perhaps an accumulation of our most vain traits. Many are out of touch not entirely by choice, but by the power of their position.
These influencers may or may not experience problems their viewers have, on a daily basis, but their status doesn’t absolve their pain nor any traumas that transpired before their fame. Money can’t heal all wounds but it does clarify that the world we live in is not the same one our celebs are living in.