Many keep up with their favorite internet celebrities for content like fashion advice or lifestyle inspiration. Others follow them not for what they post, but for the drama that follows. The real show is happening in comment sections, TikTok stitches, and more recently on anonymous Reddit snark forums, where the claws are fully out.Â
What exactly is snark?
Snark is gossip’s meaner, more self-aware cousin — thriving on sarcasm, judgment, and the kind of brutal honesty most people would never say out loud. Reddit, the sprawling online forum, has taken snark to the next level with subpages dedicated to the collective mockery of influencers (ex: r/NYCinfluencersnark). Think of it like a hot-take haven for the chronically online.Â
While some compare it to cyber-bullying, others see it as harmless banter at the expense of out-of-touch influencers. Wherever you land, the very existence of Reddit influencer snark is proof that in the age of hyper-transparency, curated perfection breeds resentment.Â
Why do influencers fall victim?
TLDR: They’re performative, problematic, and easy to criticize.
Influencers blur the line between media-trained celebrities and regular people. They’re rich, beautiful, and aspirational — but they also cry on camera, overshare about their breakups, and ask you to buy probiotics with their discount code. This intimacy makes them feel knowable, and when they mess up, punchable. Snark thrives in that gray area, where admiration can quickly curdle into resentment.
By marketing a heavily-edited image that is unattainable to the general population, influencers are complicit to the systems that drive our collective dissatisfaction. They sell us things we don’t need, pressure us to look and dress a certain way, and complain about burnout over the “burden” of unboxing their sponsored PR packages, all under the guise of relatability. Sure, they may be victims of capitalism too, but they’re also willing participants — and polished byproducts of it.Â
Toxic or truthful?
Observers call it an unhealthy obsession. “Snark is not gossip,” said one commenter on @josiejosiejosiejosi’s Tiktok post critiquing the toxicity of Reddit influencer snark. “It’s just exceptionally harmful thoughts and language about people you don’t know personally.”
But snarkers value the opportunity to unpack deeper social issues. When an influencer promotes a new detox powder, some see harmless diet advice. Snarkers see a pseudoscientific scam rooted in socially constructed beauty standards.
A more serious example involves 8Passengers vlogger Ruby Franke, who was indicted for child abuse in 2023. One snarker recalls that it was the snark community that had been pointing out the red flags — long before they had surfaced to the mainstream.
While snark can at times be petty and cruel, it can also provide a platform for people to process their frustrations with the glossed over world that influencers inhabit. The majority of Reddit influencer snark isn’t just cruelty for cruelty’s sake, but a cultural coping mechanism that reflects our complicated relationship with aspirational content, capitalism, and the people who profit from both. So the next time you’re side-eyed for using plastic straws while Alix Earle is flying private from one side of LA to the other — you know who’s got your back.