I totally agree. Irish influencers, by and large, are big fish in a tiny pond. They are literally using their following (us) to show themselves to brands, and they then flaunt what they have in their followers faces as though they’re celebrities or people are jealous of them, or that they’re somehow better than the rest of us because they have a mansion or they take expensive trips or they don’t wear things more than once. But when they’re expected to pay for their own mattress, their own groceries, their own water bottles, their own Christmas pjs, their own skincare or tan, their own hotel stays, then it’s a different story. They’ll hold out for things for free. I may not own a mansion, but my home is comfortable. I rely on nobody to put a mattress under myself or my family, I rely on nobody to put food on my table. Anything I earn, I have educated myself and worked hard to get to where I am. When I relax on a Friday evening, on a couch I bought myself, I know I’ve benefited society, I haven’t my feet up on a free couch, having made my money selling things to impressionable people on the internet. When I stay in a hotel, I support hotels that value paying customers and not hotels who support people so mean they would think bad of putting a couple hundred euro (maybe 2 stories worth of money) into the local economy.
The tide has been turning on these people for a while and I think most of them are at the end of the good time era. They’re mostly unemployable with huge egos, they’re aging and soon enough they’ll be buying their own mattress and drinking from a refillable Ballygown bottle like the rest of us.
The American influencers are so polished compared to our crowd ...well ones I have seen anyways..I've seen ones where they are very honest this is my job ..I create content ..they usually are very clear when something is an ad and often say please support our family click on the link ...our ones try to make it look like they are living these high flying lives and hide ads like crazy and make it seem like they doing us a favour if they pop a link up ...meanwhile under it all they are desperate for engagement and trying to grab all the money they can .