De-influencing my life
It takes you to an ephemeral high, the first couple of times you receive a PR box. It's the thrill of receiving things for free yet still feeling like you've earned them. After all, didn't you fight tooth and nail to make a name for yourself as an online personality?
There's a lot of self-gratification involved in being an influencer. It took me almost the entirety of my career to admit that, and to completely recognize that the highly glamorized transient "influencer" lifestyle didn’t come without consequences.
I was 13 when I received my first-ever PR package. What started with one small bracelet store became new bags of clothes and jewelry on an almost monthly basis. I promoted quite literally anything, from makeup and skincare to swimwear, ice cream, hotels, and watches I could never actually afford. I never went outside without bugging my friends and family to “take a photo of me for the sponsors.” By the time my third management contract expired at age 20, I had worked with over 45 brands and companies, remained a regular on various PR lists, saw my face on random kiosks in Metro Manila, and had two digital magazine features.
I thought getting paid to exist was fun, but what I should’ve realized sooner was how I would lose control of what my existence was about. My freshman year of university happened in the middle of the pandemic’s first big lockdown, and the only way I got to know my blockmates was through Instagram. After scrolling through smiling prom pictures and Timezone photobooth snaps, I wanted to know how I looked to people whose first brushes with me would take place online.
My entire life was an ad. Every single post on my Instagram was a campaign or a photo shoot. Nothing from my high school play, just a selfie in the fully sponsored outfit and makeup look I wore that day. No trace of the books I liked to read, just me posing in bookstores. No pictures of my friends, just me and the girls I had met at that same photo shoot.
Notes from a girl who quit being an influencer at the height of her career.
There was no evidence of my genuine interests and the things that mattered to me. Every brand deal dictated who I was—I find it a bit funny now, how it was this detail that made me realize I was losing my agency, not the fact that I had signed a contract at 15, saying I wasn’t allowed to change my hair color without the consent of my agent.
Influencers have this ingrained mentality that more is always better. But the more packages we endorse, the more we lose sight of what makes us who we truly are. Are we on Instagram to preserve the best and happiest moments of our lives, or to serve as blank digital billboards for whoever needs to be advertised next?
I loved receiving free products just as much as the average influencer probably does, but over time, I began to ask myself if I had too much of what I didn’t need. Why do we think we need to promote five different lip gloss lines from five different brands when they were clearly sourced from the same factories?
Besides, when we receive products, we typically get sent every single shade and variation available, and we very seldom “hit pan” on all of these products. Most expire and collect dust inside our drawers.
Something needed to change, but I was torn between the person I wanted to be and the person I was contractually obliged to be. The truth was, I wanted to be like Jack Harries.
Jack Harries, the brain behind the vlogging channel Jacksgap, became Jack Harries—climate activist, filmmaker, and co-founder of the environmental media platform Earthrise. He knew he had the audience, and knew he had the power to get people to pay attention, so we began to see the end of his vlogging career and the start of full-time climate activism and environmental filmmaking.
I wanted to be a climate activist, but how could I when I kept asking people to buy every single unnecessary shade of one lip gloss line? I learned that a culture so driven by consumption would eventually consume me, but little by little, I took my agency back.
It took a while to be loud about climate justice on social media. I had to be meticulous with my research. Climate justice wasn’t my area of expertise, so people naturally expected me to fail. After all, who would listen to an influencer talk about climate change?
Turns out, a lot of people.
Talking about climate justice on my social media became a more frequent occurrence. Soon, next to a picture from a photo shoot was me at a climate strike. My stories became filled with people who inspired me, and I eventually began lending my account to activists who I thought needed a bigger audience. I said no to unnecessary brand deals and only worked with eco-conscious ones, and that small step led to where I am today: an aspiring journalist, sometimes print model, co-founder of a youth organization, and full-time international youth mentor and public speaker.
I quit being an influencer two years ago, and I have zero regrets. When I finally pressed “delete” on the Instagram page I dedicated eight years of my life to, I felt nothing but freedom. I felt a lot safer too, after realizing that 30,000 people should not have access to my life, and now, my friendships feel so much more authentic. People aren’t nice to me because I’m related to this person or friends with that celebrity. They just want to know me for who I really am, and it’s nice to finally be that person, even though no one pays me to. Who I am now is making a bigger influence on the world than the person I was when I was an influencer.