We’re only a few months into 2025 and there’s already a lot to be mad about. But on TikTok, there’s a new rage cycle brewing at NYC-based influencers. Their crime? Being “boring.”
The hubbub kicked off last week when a woman who goes by @martinifeeny made a declarative statement: she was over them all.
“I hate all of the New York influencers,” she declared. “I think that they’re boring as fuck and their all carbon copies of each other.” She then listed their crimes, which included wearing the same jewelry, shopping at the same store (Revolve), and experiencing the same mental health issues (panic attacks).
“They should be the influence-es not the influence-rs,” she concluded.
@MartiniFeeny’s apparently off the cuff and somewhat jokey video clearly struck a chord. Since she posted it, other women on social media have been commiserating about the lack of originality among influencers in the city.
Soon, a consensus of who these “NYC influencers” to be angry at emerged. They are white, usually blonde, thin, and conventionally attractive city transplants. They “live to post,” not the other way around, and are obsessed with follower counts and brand deals.
Then, other New York-based creators, who importantly do not identify with the group being called boring, entered the chat to share some goss. One, Alicia Mae Holloway, said on TikTok that one of the influencer cliques in the city are known for being “mean girls,” doing an impression at the death stares she says they gave her at a Rare Beauty event in 2024.
“Their vibe is just really cocky and uninterested,” she said.
Others, especially Black and POC creators who are native New Yorkers, weighed in to say that this was not the type of influencers they thought represented their city.
“How it feels to know that girl was surely not talking about you she said ‘all NYC influencers are boring,’” wrote one, Chelsea of @chelseaasoflate, in response to the drama. “Sincerely a Queens girlie and her Bronx bestie.”
Another, Sarah Torkornoo, said that the problem with many well-known “NYC influencers,” is that they are all the same: white, upper middle class women from outside the city with similar life experiences and interests.
“They don’t go above 14th street, they don’t go into any boroughs outside of Manhattan, there’s a lack of genuine open-mindnesses and curiosity that I think is necessary to character development while living here,” she said.
Though most of the accusers didn’t name names, some NYC-based influencers felt called out, including Brigette Pheloung, known as “Acquired Style” online. Pheloung, who posts videos on the account with her twin sister Danielle, did a “stitch” rebuttal of @MartiniFeeny’s video where she danced and mocked it (she later deleted the video).
These criticisms of influencers, both in New York and more broadly, are not especially novel. As I explored in my book Swipe Up For More, as long as women have been creating content on the internet, they have been called vapid, stupid, boring, and materialistic. The industries they tend to focus on, from beauty to fashion, wellness, and general lifestyle, are highly stigmatized as being feminine pursuits and therefore, shallow or silly.
It’s also true that the influencer industry is, like American society, extremely biased on everything from race to body type and conventional attractiveness. In 2022, a public relations firm called MSL along with the Influencer League commissioned a groundbreaking study on racial disparities into the influencer industry found the pay gap between Black and white influencers was a stunningly high 35%.
“The data shows that the forces driving the racial pay gap are similar to the drivers of pay gaps in other industries…however, in the young and unregulated influencer industry where affluence and connections play an outsized role and with social platform algorithms perpetuating inequity, those forces are amplified by orders of magnitude,” they concluded.
So, social media popularity is largely a reflection of the biases and inequality of our society at large. As Torkornoo pointed out in her video, it’s the followers themselves who are making this same type of cookie-cutter woman the most popular type of influencer.
“On social media people reward wealth,” she said. “And they reward privilege, which also kind of perpetuates this cycle of the rich getting richer because we platform people who already have money and live luxuriously. This perversion and glamourization of what it’s like to live here perpetuates this idea that it’s a young, wealthy person’s playground, which it certainly is not.”
Basically, if the only New York influencers you’re following (and being bored by) are indistinguishable from each other, that’s more of a problem with the feed you have curated than anything else. In response to the drama, many commenters have said they will attempt to seek out more diverse and more interesting NYC-based creators, who show more than one perspective on the city.
There’s one more layer to this whole thing, though. Why now?
I have a theory. The last time we saw such an uproar against influencers specifically was exactly five years ago (anyone remember what was going on then?) Amid the terror and frustration of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and the volatile Donald Trump administration, influencers were singled out as the worst among us.
Two major NYC-based influencers, Arielle Charnas and Naomi Davis, faced big backlash for some COVID-19 missteps (Davis has since left the industry entirely) and many creators told me privately that they had never experienced such a deluge of hate comments as they did from 2020 to 2022. Sure, many influencers did plenty wrong, acted out of touch, or flaunted their wealth during the crises, but the outsized amount of blame and criticism many experienced felt like something else. The general consensus of those in the industry was that people were looking for someone to yell at, and well, influencers were right there.
So, it’s not shocking to me that as the second Trump administration has plunged the US again into economic and social anxiety, people again have started growing frustrated at the faces on their feeds. When you’re scared about high prices or losing your job or your home, there’s nothing more triggering than a seemingly carefree privileged woman making the most expensive city in the world her playground.
But again there’s some good news: your feed is ultimately your design. If the New York influencers are boring you to the point of rage, it’s an easy problem to solve. Unfollow, take a deep breath, and move on.
The post NYC Influencers Are Boring Drama: What’s This Really About? appeared first on Glamour.
