When you look further into the TikTok party that Lydia is inviting people to, it sadly may not be
entirely real. Or reel.
But it is part of a larger story.
Thursday night, when Lydia posted her
most recent TikTok (
surprise...it was another Amazon dress!), it was fascinating to see all the
comments start flooding in, within the
first 2 hours alone. Not only was it heavy with the usual
“I want to be like you one day, Lydia!” but it was nearly equally matched by
many Amazon-specific comments, like,
“
Are you saying that’s an Amazon dress!?!”
It smelled fishy.
Especially when you
look at this dress. What is it? Long-sleeved charcoal-colored “cashmere.”
Same story, different day: an
unknown brand (YTR6RTW) on Amazon that has
no reviews and it is
unclear of what it is really made.
When looking at the dress and listing itself,
it would be hard to find a more basic dress than this. There is
nothing standout about it; it has
no exciting form, cut or shape to it.
No embellishments. Not even a great styling of the dress on a model. Just plopped on a white background.
100% unremarkable—something few would click on.
🩺 🩺 🩺 This dress barely registers a pulse.
So how does this unbranded, basic dress,
some 72 hours later now have nearly 600K views, with people 'clamoring over it?' Especially when Lydia used
few &
basic hashtags on the posting, while
forgetting its most potent one: #Amazon.
It doesn’t make sense.
So if not the dress, is it the
wearer of this dress?
When you dig deeper and
look into these younger viewers and
what matters to them, who is it that they look up to these days? According to a fresh-off-the-presses
Piper Sandler report, it would be
Taylor Swift, Zendaya and Hailey Bieber. They also love brands like
Nike and H&M most.
When you look at it visually (
as shown below)
, it becomes more apparent. The
#EnglishCountryGrandmother meets
#LydiainParis looks, with scarves tucked into belts, often with a headband,
do not seem to jive/make Lydia a long-lost style twin.
There are sadly more signs of oddity than these.
EVIDENCE: In
Lydia’s TikTok metrics from this past week.
Look at Lydia’s second most recent TikTok (the one in a
red box) which was posted on Tuesday. This was the
Louis Vuitton unboxing that has been discussed a lot. This TikTok has now yielded a
whopping 3.2M+ views and 461K likes in 5 days. And her third most recent one (in the
orange box)—yet another basic Amazon cashmere dress—
has nearly 1M views in 6 days.
From Thursday,
October 13 – Thursday,
October 20, Lydia posted 6 TikToks:
When you look
solely at engagement—
not views—you can see that Lydia
averages 30K likes & 250 comments per day on TikTok:
But
somehow this past Monday (one of the slowest days on TikTok) she
suddenly gets 120,000 more likes than usual. Mostly for a basic, unknown Amazon dress.
And then on Tuesday, the day she posts her
LV TikTok, things really get skyrocketing —she gets 3 TIMES even Monday’s 120,000 jump—for 360,000 more likes than usual.
So a
1,300% increase in likes in one day.
Even greater, she gets
5,000+ MORE comments than her usual daily 250 comments. Creating
a 2,700% increase.
Yes, you read that correctly:
a 2,700% increase in comments.
On a Tuesday. And this was also able to happen when she:
(1) didn't speak the name of the LV bag in the
Tiktok; (2) didn't place the name in the title or
description box; (3) nor in a
#hashtag; and
(4) admits in the TikTok that she doesn't
even care what the bag’s name is. What?
And then somehow, magically, after all this
escalating, growing 48-hour excitement, on Thursday night,
things come crashing right back down to Lydia's normal TikTok levels: 28K likes and
215 comments.
There is nothing organic or natural about 1,300% and 2,700% spikes...that go down as quickly as they go up.
Now go back and look at the
first 3 TikToks that were posted earlier in the week—before the spike—and you can see they perform substantially worse, (
even when those Amazon dresses can be found there too)!
All 3 colored-boxed TikTok posts that
fell under the spike period are **
doubling, tripling and more ** the performance of the week's earlier TikToks—when they have had less listing time.
Why?
Therefore, these appear to likely be
purchased views, likes &
customized comments.
It is not hard, nor would it be expensive to do this, as there are
countless social media “fake like” vendors everywhere, even on Etsy. Here is one where you could
buy Wednesday's 5,000 comments for just $78 (but it's always even better when you buy in bulk!):
Some sites allow you to buy
the exact-worded comments you want to appear in advance so that the purchaser
can set the perfect stage ...to then
play off those pre-made, customized comments for the
scripted engagement dance they wish to play out.
So If Team Lydia had wanted to promote Amazon, for instance,
it would be easy to buy many pre-baked Amazon comments/questions of their own making in advance that could then
start trickling in on the
exact TikToks they wanted, at the
exact moment they wanted.
And what would be a cheaper, easier or better way to get people thinking that Lydia is adored by 14-24-year olds —one of the most coveted audiences by brands—than by
purchasing a bunch of “I want to be you when I grow up!” comments—which just by the very nature of those words, allows people to subconsciously believe these are young and impressionable viewers...
who have their pocketbooks open, ready to buy whatever Lydia is suggesting, so they can be just like her!
Another oddity? Lydia has made
no secret of her inspiration/love of The Princess of Wales. Ironically, there are
hundreds of comments like
'Wow, you look like Kate Middleton! " throughout, of which Lydia responds to more often than most.
Also, recall how often Lydia has been pushing
"go to my TikTok!" over the
past few months, both on
Instagram and
YouTube, calling out all the milestone numbers and even
creating "controversy" over it. She wants this to be noticed very much.
This would help explain some of
these basic Amazon dresses' odd soaring numbers, but it could also explain some of the
happily-touted TikTok success of late too....
when conversely, views & engagement on the other platforms have all been declining (more on that below).
WOULD IT BE **POSSIBLE**?:
Team Lydia filmed and broadcast their
luxury bag shopping trip in London late last week to:
(1) create content for Monday’s vlog (2) have a
fun girls' day/night out ; (3) to brighten up Lydia’s bad week with a
nice, feel-good purchase ; and
(4) likely
send a quiet message to the world that Lydia
wasn’t sad/unaffected by things; but,
(5) could it also have been to
procure a bright, new shiny object for a big unboxing? This
shiny object
shouldn't be another out-of-touch Hermes bag—but something
more universal and approachable, and what better than the
#3 most sought-after brand by young women:
Louis Vuitton (
see that Piper Sandler report again above).
This
shiny new Louis Vuitton object would not only naturally play off
Lydia’s known love of LV trunks and
her growing collection (
which she makes sure to mention, don’t forget), but it is a
luxury purchase unboxing which often
naturally performs well on Tiktok.
So then, would a new Louis Vuitton bag unboxing not create a quite perfect and
very believable "Trojan Horse TikTok," of which
one could stuff a big TikTok views/likes/comments buy underneath— which would hopefully go undetected?
What is also
peculiar is that yesterday—just 4 days later—Lydia posted this same LV reel on her
YouTube Shorts. It has performed
nowhere like it has on TikTok...achieving only
136 comments,
2.6K likes and
30K total views so far. While it is a few days behind, it has
0.937% the views—not even a full 1%—of what has been found with the TikTok success. And the
likes are
very out of whack too: they are 459,000 less than TikTok. Plus this YouTube reel was optimally uploaded on the
weekend—unlike the weekday TikTok posting.
The deltas in these performance metrics should not be this extreme.
Why might one ***potentially*** do this?
The 3M-viewed Louis Vuitton TikTok was posted on Tuesday, October 18. Besides being a way to strategically support the YouTube vlog about this bag from the night before,
there was also a lot happening in the background.
It had been nothing but a bad string of days for Team Lydia;
not much had been going right.
Looking at it visually, across a calendar, it included:
(1) a
Holland Cooper "family announcement" backfiring and the
embarrassment that inevitably accompanies that;
(2) Victoria’s trip which she was
noticeably excluded from;
(3) Tattlers’ finding
Globy in discount shops, which only served to
revive the controversy;
(4) Thursday’s UGG rant + Amazon questioning;
(5) chickens that weren’t hers;
(6) the Purdey mess...and more.
It was all a doozy....something one
might like to cover up—and quickly so.
And that may well be what happened.
For what might be a better way than to
redirect attention over to TikTok, the new home you have been
cultivating? It is also the
one place where
Holland Coper hadn't been announced; it is also the
one place where people probably don't even know what
Globy is; and it is also where
OG YouTube & Instagram followers (who know a lot of these stories) won’t likely go or comment. But most of all,
it is where all the hot social media action is. (Plus those TikTok buys are
pretty cheap!)
Look at the calendar again when the TikTok spike dates are laid atop, shown in 🟣
purple 🟣 and the timing fits
nearly perfectly—able to
help deflect/distract, including
the growing Purdey mess that was now starting to unfold.
The Lydia Millen brand has fallen since pre-pandemic times.
Hello! used to write stories
(albeit paid by the brand, but
still...it was media coverage) about her. Strong brands like
Farfetch, Laura Mercier, L'Oreal, By Terry and
Estee Lauder/Aerin (and don't forget Lydia got to hold court with Aerin & interview her) all used to proudly feature her—unlike today, where they
mainly give her
a coupon code to let her unbox and sell their items
with affiliate links from
her sage green attic dressing room. Lydia
isn't attending the events/PR trips/parties that she used to and it is rare that her
face is proudly shown aside a brand,
other than Karen Millen.
Her
engagement slippage is starting to show on
Instagram and
YouTube, especially when clickbait titles are not used:
And when you look at
Lydia's life and partnerships of late (as shown below): (1) she is now found in
London hotel powder rooms bemoaning lost perfume (which she then rather sillily
days later, flaunts an obscene perfume arsenal,
touting that it requires an assistant’s help to organize it all);
(2) her
Karen Millen collection is not faring well; even the most highly-featured
"By Lydia" pieces are
still fully available...a month later;
(3) her
idol, The Princess of Wales, wore an
Elizabeth Hurley x Karen Millen Forever Dress—
not something from Lydia's collection; and
(4) partnerships with companies like Cosmetips
haven’t sold out either, 1 month+ later. Her
brand power is fading.
When you
contrast this to her
frenemy, Victoria, it's a
big difference. Victoria, on the other hand
(as shown below):
(1) is enjoying another
“best-selling” jewelry launch; (2) ...which she and Lydia's old friends, including Josie, were whisked off to
France for;
(3) she has her
upcoming, highly-promoted Holland Cooper line coming out; and
(4) she
literally has Jade’s embrace, something
Lydia very publicly failed to secure.
This
Lydia & Lauren/The LA Way's fast-growing friendship is confusing, but it seems
a business relationship could also be blossoming, as was referenced in
The LA Way's stories at Farmhouse the other night. Is it because
Lydia’s Karen Millen deal is soon coming to an end...and Lydia is going to
come under the fold there?
Or is this just another client engagement, as not a lot of
other influencers are wearing
Aavelle—but "
Queen Lydia" (as The LA Way adoringly calls her),
will?
Whatever the case,
Tuesday's Louis Vuitton TikTok was just as much an ad for
Aavelle clothing & Aavelle hair bows than anything else—Aavelle likely could have not achieved
3.2M views, 461K likes & 6K+ comments on its own either.
And once again, when you look back at the calendar, this
TikTok spike equally benefitted The LA Way/Aavelle too, whose launch was originally slated for this very day, before
Aavelle suddenly moved its launch up to the night before, perhaps to also
be fully ready to capitalize upon TikTok.
Finally, the
holidays are now quickly upon us —a well-known
make-or-break period for companies around the world.
Influencers too. And Team Lydia
needs to sell Lydia to prospective brands. So while Lydia's
“
Look at my TikTok Party”
story the other day was
shown to hopefully get viewers to become cross-platform users, the
primarily purpose was likely to serve as a siren call for brands and PR managers to take note of her TikTok ascent (notice that she made sure to include
her latest milestone numbers in the post),
so Team Lydia can finalize/line up holiday partnerships & deals, especially on this
critcal, growing platform.
But
it’s not just revenue that Team Lydia likely wishes to bring its way—they also need
to fill up an entire month’s worth of content for Vlogmas videos—which includes
a big risk of exposure if there are any shown drying-up work opportunities.
Another example of a likely Lydia
"soft holiday marketing sell" this past week would be the
SpaceNK party stories she shared the other night. Filled with messages of "
it is never too early for the holidays!" , with classic
holiday music playing underneath, it was a
quiet reminder that Lydia is
out on the town, ready for business and
ready to be *YOUR BRAND'S* next Holiday influencer too!
(* Also, why would Lydia wear Vampire's Wife—instead of her many cashmere Amazon dresses, or something from her Karen Millen line to this soiree?)
.
All in all, things feel very "off"—not coming from a position of honesty, confidence and strength.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that things are not going well.