A TikTok user with more than 13 million followers has responded to the backlash she received over a “toxic and tone deaf” video from 2021 in which she complained about the supposed struggles of being an influencer.
“I literally just finished work and it’s 5:19 a.m.[pm]Mikayla Nogueira, who is known on the platform for her makeup videos, said in the now-deleted clip, which resurfaced last week, amassing over six million views and inspiring a whole Reddit thread.
“Try being an influencer for a day. Try it. Because people who say it’s easy are so crazy. Try it for a day.
Elsewhere in the video, which the 24-year-old made in response to a comment telling her to “find a real job, trying to work 9 to 5,” she detailed the “five to six hours of shooting video content that ranges from three to four videos, and then I spend a few hours editing that video content.”
“Then I have to work on my other social media profiles, whatever they are. It’s fucking marketing. Then I’m in meetings from 12-5pm,” Nogueira added.
“[Being an influencer] is not for everyone. In fact, it’s for a very small handful of people who can actually do this job… You don’t want to have this job. I say it like that.”
Critics focused on the soundbite of the Boston local telling people to “try being an influencer for a day”, with dozens calling his comments “disappointing” and “out of touch”.
“I would love to try being an influencer for a day, Mikayla,” a ICT Tac the user wrote in a video.
“Because while you’re sitting in your million dollar house, lying to people about makeup, I’m working two jobs from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. just so I can pay rent and groceries. While you do what I do in a year in a week.
While her fellow influencer Anayka Elle captioned her video: “The job is a lot, but baby you have to be quiet.”
“Influencers complaining about their work is tantamount to white people complaining about being called a ‘cracker’. You’ll never win, I’m so sorry,” she, who is black, said.
While she agreed that “being an influencer is a job like any other” and can be “exhausting” and “boring”, “the issues I have now – being an influencer – are issues I wish I had two or three years ago when I had a regular job”.
“So disappointing to see mikayla nogueira become an out-of-the-box influencer,” one woman wrote on Twitter.
“Complaining about how hard his job is when most of us earn just enough to get by, some people work over 12 hours and still can’t pay their bills. Girl Stfu”.
“It’s just very disconnected to complain to working class people about how hard it is to be and (sic) an influencer…I have 0 sympathy for you???” another one tweeted.
Nogueira has now responded to the vitriol she received over the nearly two-year-old clip, explaining in nine minutes video that she was “having a shitty day and I made a video that I absolutely shouldn’t do”.
“I regret that I did. There’s a reason, a year and a half ago I deleted that video and apologized – because it was wrong of me,” he said. she added, saying that at the time, her “emotions were running high” and her words were “taken out of context”.
“It broke my f**king heart…that people made it look like I think I work harder than everyone else. That’s an absolute fucking lie. Absolutely not.
“Do I think this work tires me? Absolutely. But I’m fucking mentally ill, mate.
“With this job comes an extreme amount of f**king privileges and blessings. This is fucking shitty work, I’m not going to lie.
After expressing her gratitude for her work and “all the support” she’s received from fans, Nogueira announced that she’s stepping down from content creation for the time being.
“I don’t want to lose myself completely, you know? So I’m going to go away for a while. I’m going to get treatment. I’m going to seek help because my depression just isn’t good,’ she said, revealing the breakup was unrelated to the backlash.
“I just want to be the best Mikayla I can be, and right now I’m not a very good version of myself.”
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