Social Media can be a real bitch when ‘good intentions’ come back to bite the person involved. Take the case of the influencer who wanted a free hotel stay and got roasted for it.
Why do some social media influencers think they’re entitled to everything? Just because their precious followers want to see every move they make, doesn’t mean they’re good influences. Look at the infamous Logan Paul for example. When asked how Olivia Jade was doing after the College Admissions Scandal happened, his response to the journalist who asked the question wasn’t what was expected. His answer was “Who?” Guinnulli’s 1.93Million followers is tiny compared to Paul’s who has 25.2 million followers across both of his YouTube channels. So what does this have to do with a hotel stay? Well, before we meet Elle Darby, we’re going to rant a little.
A Look At An Influencer’s Life
Most social media influencers do the right thing, while others just want to make a name for themselves and live in luxury. While that might be the norm, it’s also giving the term ‘social media influencer’ a bad rap.
When you’re starting out as an influencer, you have to be patient and you have to be creative. We’re only a small blog, but we’re growing with every post, but we’re not an influencer. We’re just an Entertainment blog.
Back to what we were talking about. When it comes to influencers with large followings in the millions, it normally means that they get a ton of cash from various sources. However, this can often backfire. Let’s look at the case of Elle Darby.
Meet Elle Darby
Now this might be old news, but it recently caught our attention since it is an influencer thing after we saw something about the story on Twitter.
Elle Darby’s social media career began when she started posting about her weight loss journey. However, as she gained more and more traction, she started seeking out endorsements. One of the endorsements she was interested in was with the Charleville Lodge.
She came up with a business proposal where she wanted to stay at the hotel for free in exchange for publicity for the hotel. In the email she sent, she said she had 87k YouTube followers and 76k followers on Instagram and even provided links to her profiles. However, her deal backfired miserably.
The owner of the hotel and another business, the White Moose Cafe, Paul Stenson posted to Facebook slamming her. He points out that his establishment has a large following too and doesn’t need some influencer to help him boost business. He also said that if he were to allow her and her partner to stay there for free, who was going to pay his staff in that time?
Paul also said in his Facebook post that having a following doesn’t mean they’re better off than anyone else and that he would never ask for anything for free. At the end of the post, he said Elle and her partner would have to pay their way like everyone else.
Elle later posted a video to YouTube over the whole #Bloggergate thing saying she felt embarrassed by being called out.
The situation continued with Paul billing Elle €4,300,000. That’s US$5.3Million for anyone trying to keep count.
What Was The Lesson Learned Here?
Large followings don’t get you anywhere! You need to pay for everything and not expect anything for free. In Elle’s case, she should have done proper research like, we don’t know… checking social media stats before making a business proposal! She probably assumed that the hotel was some small place in Dublin (where it’s located) that was new and needed a ‘big’ influencer to boost sales.
Here’s the thing though. When this occured in 2018, she wasn’t a large influencer with a million followers. Sure, she mentioned ‘boosting’ profits at Universal Orlando, but we don’t think she did. Now, because of what happened with #BloggerGate, she has over 249k followers on Instagram. As they say, bad press is good press.
For Elle, she shouldn’t assume people are just going to say yes to her because she has a large following. She’s a human being who worked hard. Just because she did that doesn’t mean she should expect people to hand stuff over to her because she’s ‘famous’. We had never heard of Elle Darby until today.
She should have become a motivation speaker or something similar. Even a blogger, not a vlogger. There’s more to life than wanting free stuff because you think you’re a big deal. That’s selfish thinking.
A lot of people are struggling to feed their families and these entitled spoilt people think they can take what they want and leave those who are trying put food on the table out to dry. Think of the people watching. Are you giving them something useful? Or are you showing them that you’ve got stuff they want but don’t have? Think about it.
Nothing in life is free.
