Aja Barber

[toughbutfair]

Aja in her Stories saying how she deletes comments that tell her her account is an echo chamber....... it is though? and she must know that? people are too scared to disagree with her AND all her followers are ready and willing to drag anyone for her. More proof that she just can't handle having a conversation with people who disagree with her. She must be INSUFFERABLE as a friend or partner.

Having known Aja Barber personally for almost two decades, I can confirm that she has long suffered from debilitating insecurities that manifested themselves in passive-aggressive behavior, especially while living with and being supported by her parents throughout her 20s and early 30s. Make no mistake: she had a very privileged upbringing, growing up in one of Northern Virginia's most affluent and inclusive middle class communities by two professionally established parents. But instead of letting that inspire her to create or build something new, Aja often preferred to tear down and criticize others, the more successful the better. But it was the rise of the new culture wars (circa 2014-2016) which provided her a perfect opportunity to weaponize progressive causes like BLM and #MeToo to build a a niche following for herself on social media, inexplicably as a self-proclaimed authority on sustainable fashion design when she possessed no formal higher education or experience in the fashion industry.

Unfortunately Aja's capacity for critical thought, let alone introspection, rarely exceeds that of a vindictive teenager. Perhaps this explains why, that despite her moderate successes, she remains a 'fangirl' at heart, bolstering her chronic lack of self worth by relentlessly pursuing followers and likes instead of more difficult achievements. Even when she was able to get some PR validation from brands she long fawned over (e.g., Finland's Marimekko) or even her book deal, it wasn't enough. Maybe because she realizes deep down inside that her entire career is built upon destructiveness and negativity rather than creating actual value?

As stated repeatedly above, when it comes to consistency on issues, sustainability-related or otherwise, Ms. Barber's modus operandi is to excuse bad behavior by any persons or companies with whom she has built some alliance while mercilessly attacking all others that she perceives as being in disagreement with her or "out of her league".

 

[Justalurker2020]

I used to follow Aja but I became disillusioned when I actually did the maths to figure out how much she earned on Patreon, which I used to support. I should say in advance that I'm not explicitly opposed to her earning the amount she earns, but I think the issue is that she very much says that you are paying for her content, and her content is crap. Her IG (unsubsdcribed) is incredibly repetitive, and her Patreon is just her writing 100–300 words in response to articles. Often the actual interesting discussion on those was in the comments by Patrons, not by Aja. So what am I paying for? Plus every damn thing that woman writes is about money and class and where she fits into it. And she's always positioning herself as not super well off, only now is she just middle class etc, and she bangs on about London being expensive. I'd almost rather she just unashamedly asked for money like the Slumflower who she so detests. She's just not being open even though she pretends to be. Plus she's stayed friends with a lot of other questionable people on IG.

But to the numbers. I'm just going to present my calculations here for you to get a sense of her earnings:
- She hides both her patron count and her income. People tend to only do this when they make a lot of money and I think it's shady.
- At some point she said that she hit 2,500 subscribers on Patreon and was going to make her newsletter free for everyone. She's hit that goal. I assume she has more patrons than that currently as she hit the goal a while ago, but let's stick to this number.
- At the highest tier, Patreon takes 12% of a creator's monthly income, plus processing fees. I'll bump this up to 17% which I assume is an overestimate.
- Onto Aja's tiers. Aja has seven tiers: $1 (only for students and limited), $5, $10, $20, $25, $50 (for buisness advice) and $100 (for being a personal shopper). I have thoughts about this but I'll leave them for now.
- Based on these tiers, I'm going to assume that the average amount of money people are giving is $10 a month. I'm also going to throw in an extra $300 because based on how she's spoken about it in the past, I'm assuming that she has at least three personal shopping members. I guess that means I'm calculating that she has 2,503 patrons. I should note, though, that I think these are all underestimates.
- Without deducting Patreon fees, that's $25,300 (2,500 x $10 + $300) per month.
- 17% of $25,300 is $4,301 in monthly Patreon fees (which is a lot, don't get me wrong!).
- In total, my estimate is that Aja is earning $20,999 a month. That is $251,988 a year before tax.
- I think the exchange rate is meant to be bad rn, but that comes out to £180,991 a year with the today exchange rate.
- This, of course, does not even take into account how much her husband earned, and it must have been a reasonable amount as he bought the flat they live in.
- Oh, or her book advance.

If you support any accounts on Patreon I would suggest looking at how much they might earn (some have it up, some have only the subscriber numbers), you might be surprised what you find!

 

[Esteelouder]

I wonder if she bullies her white husband into 'financial redistribution'?

I really don't like the way she assumes that all white people have money. I am currently on the bones of my arse and the last thing I am going to do is sign up for an influencer's patreon.

She’s so rude with it too. The example above where people are saying they are disabled and out of work and she’s attacking them back. Or someone saying ‘I’m sorry’ and she’s like ‘I don’t need your sorry I need your money’… I would love it if people would just pay for me to sit on my arse too, Aja, but there’s a real world out there.

 

[snarkvark]

Aja is absolutely unhinged.. not only begging for people to give her money, BERATING them for not having done so already. Completely disregarding that many of her followers will be suffering the effects of the cost of living increases in the UK. Wild that she thinks it's ok to demand money from people just because they're white so they must be wealthy huh. Quite classist of you, Aja!

She's the one that chose to take up this role of "educator" on Instagram. Now she expects people to pay her for her ranty social media posts. If she hates it so much she should go and do another job.

She's one of the most toxic people on Instagram.. she also brought a lot of this on herself by fostering an incredibly hostile "fan base" that she's encouraged to attack people. The fact that Aja is now crying about how it's affecting her mental health is laughable.

What goes around comes around I guess! Go outside and touch grass, Aja.

 

[snarkvark]

Aja is completely unhinged. She needs therapy. She's clearly a deeply unhappy and troubled person that shouldn't be on social media let alone making it her job.

Does she not realise that most people aren't subscribed to Substacks? That they're most likely reading them for free? She comes across as so entitled, as if she's owed a living just because she chose to put herself online and (apparently) "work" for free (what does she actually do though, apart from scream at people all day long?)

I hope people listen to her advice and unfollow in droves. I can't imagine her words have gone down well with many of her followers who may be feeling the cost of living crisis.

 

[Lorelei]

I wonder if she bullies her white husband into 'financial redistribution'?

I really don't like the way she assumes that all white people have money. I am currently on the bones of my arse and the last thing I am going to do is sign up for an influencer's patreon.

 

[hazelnot]

I mean, social media is exactly that: social. Some people can and have monetised it and if you want to jump on that boat, fine, go for it. But very few influencers are paid by their followers, they earn from brand endorsements. Patreon and Substack are the obvious exception; there you can have customers vs. followers. Instagram is a totally different platform; it's wild to think people should only follow you there if they're paying for content elsewhere? Unless you're black, obviously. This only applies to white followers. Because that makes perfect sense.

I could wax lyrical on the madness of this for hours but it's pretty simple really: if you don't want a platform, don't have one. If Instagram isn't your vibe, leave. If it's a necessary evil to drive traffic to your subscription platform and therefore you do want Instagram, treat it like the marketing tool you're using it as and behave accordingly. Belittling followers and trying to gaslight them into feeling like bad people for not paying you for content they clearly either can't afford or don't find valuable enough to pay for is not the ticket. They're clearly not your customers anyway, and surely lots who are currently customers will be turned off by this attitude?

Feels counterproductive to me but go off sis.

 

[Jockmcgraw]

I know she's actively telling me to unfollow, but I can't look away from the car crash. If she feels so abused, maybe just leave socials? She's said enough times it would make her life happier. I'd love to know if this almighty bollocking is actually translating into any new subscriptions...I'd also love to know if she practices what she preaches and is subscribed to all the people she follows who offer more content behind a pay wall.

 

[fwooper]

Who charges her mates for the dregs of a Vera Wang perfume

It's like she is inventing imaginary scenarios to get mad about. Giving things away to your friends for free is the most common thing in the world, I'm not sure why she thinks this is an unpopular opinion. Never in my life have I experienced a friend offering to sell me a book they've already read? Exchanging books for free is something strangers do, let alone friends. What strange examples.

 

[Lorelei]

And providing the so-called “free content” is hardly a benevolent gesture on her part (despite the martyr act). It’s just part of her business model - it’s the shop front that enables her to secure patreon subscribers, speaking slots, paid writing gigs, clothing collaborations etc. That is the business model you’ve chosen so either get on with it or do something else?
So now of course she is still posting stories to satisfy the algorithm and tying herself up in knots to justify it 🥱

It is bonkers that Aja lost her shit on twitter, telling people to shut up etc. Then turns around and whines people have told her to shut up so is taking time away for her mental health.

Meanwhile Sophie Benson is making the point about fast fashion Barbie merch a thousand times better and not causing a binfire while doing it.

'Credit for my labour'. Aja's 'labour' = 'eat me'. Waaaaaaah everyone is mean and not paying me, I'm leaving, please sign up to my Patreon. What a colossal asshole.

 

[EllsBellsWells]

The classism in all this fucking reeks. The only way she is able to go so hard on the ‘pay me what I’m worth’ is because she was born in to so much wealth and continues to benefit from that.

If you’re not wealthy you can’t operate like that. If you’re stuck doing a low paid (but still so vital) job like cleaning, caring, supermarket work, you will never ever be paid what you’re worth and you know that. You can’t even demand to be paid that. How is she SO insensitive to the fact so many people go on social media to while away time cause it’s free and that most people do not have the money to spare to pay people like her right now. Even if they wanted to! And her ableist attitude to shaming a disabled person who can’t work and afford to give her money. She needs cancelling ASAP

 

[PineappleQueen19]

I hope she manages to actually step away ASAP because it sounds like that would be best all round 🥱

 

[Mokie]

Oh my god. The entitlement is off the scale. So she is asking people to sign up to her Patreon so she can access private health care? Sorry what?! No one owes you anything Aja.
I unfollowed her a few years ago due to her negative comments about “white people”. It’s nasty and unnecessary. I was confused when I saw that she is married to a white man. In desperate need to therapy.

 

[Lilac Wine]

Basically, they read her book and were interested in working with her, then after meeting her they ran a mile as they could quite rightly see she is deranged, and now she thinks they owe her because they had one conversation with her.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

And if her patreon income (or subscriber numbers, i don’t think it’s clear which) has halved in a couple of years, that is telling you something, no? People subscribed for a while and decided to stop, for whatever reason it wasn’t worth it to them any longer (or possibly never was). That is their choice, you don’t get to demand others then step in to make up the perceived shortfall.

The lack of transparency around subscribers is interesting too. No problem with people not sharing but don’t keep ranting you deserve more. Pick one.

And then there’s her saying on stories she’s “shifting my content in a direction of being paid for my thoughts over there instead of putting them over here for free” whilst her patron says “Your subscription allows me to keep making the resources I put out into the world free for all! It also makes it sustainable for me to write for free and share my work with the world.”
She needs to make up her mind.

 

[hazelnot]

Another note: "I don't want more followers, they don't help me" - sorry are you helping yourself or the planet? I thought your motivations were largely altruistic? Somebody following you might learn a great deal, change their habits and encourage those around them to do the same, which might not help you personally but sure helps what you're supposedly trying to achieve.

Or is it all actually about head pats and wealth?

Tell on yourself harder.

 

[snarkvark]

think she’s missing the point that she CHOSE to create this following and this platform, no one forced her to!

when i used to follow aja, whenever she ranted about her "unpaid labour" I often felt like responding with "NOBODy ASKED YOU TO DO THIS." she's got such a chip on her shoulder over something she decided to dedicate her entire online prescence to.

sounds like she's desperate for money the way she's begging people to pay her for her "work." maybe if she provided something of substance instead of spewing hatred all the time maybe people would want to pay?

I'm wondering if more and more of her followers are waking up to how toxic aja is. honestly there are so many other better content creators out there to follow who actually teach people about sustainable fashion and race issues that don't constantly hate on you.

I just read Aja's recent instagram post about the Edinburgh Festival and... WHAT A FUCKING HYPOCRITE. so it's ok for Aja to still attend the event and be paid for it despite one of its biggest sponsors is literally the fossil fuel industry. didn't aja go absolutely bat shit crazy when Oatly got funding from a similar source? but I guess it's alright for her to take the blood money because... why exactly?

 

[urghmummybloggers]

She’s so rude with it too. The example above where people are saying they are disabled and out of work and she’s attacking them back. Or someone saying ‘I’m sorry’ and she’s like ‘I don’t need your sorry I need your money’… I would love it if people would just pay for me to sit on my arse too, Aja, but there’s a real world out there.

I find that part the worst. If she pulled her head out of her self absorbed victim mentality and read a paper or maybe even interacted with social media other than demand money, she’d see that globally, people are seriously struggling, more so here in the UK. We’re on the verge of another recession and her “I don’t care, just pay me because you are white” is deplorable

 

[hazelnot]

I see she's still going hard on the "good, unfollow me, I don't want followers anyway, followers are useless. Unless you're paying me you can GTFO" tangent.

I'm struggling to think of an industry where this logic works and can be applied the way she wants? Lots of the most avid readers rely on libraries for books. An author's biggest fan might never have paid them a cent.

 

[ThisIsMyDragName]

Is someone not wanting or being financially able to give you money for blog posts an abusive relationship? This is a wild take


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I’ve tried to read this a few times and I just cannot make head nor tail of it.