The influencer trend I absolutely refuse to participate in

There’s this thing happening on social media right now and I genuinely don’t know when we all agreed to it.

Somewhere between the morning routine videos and the “what I eat in a day” content, a new format took over — and it’s the one where an influencer films themselves crying. Sometimes it’s mid-makeup. Sometimes it’s in the car. Sometimes it’s just them staring directly into the camera, lower lip going, tears falling, and a caption that says something like “being vulnerable with you guys.”

I don’t think I’m the audience for this. And honestly? I don’t think I’m the creator for it either.

What even is the “emotional vulnerability” content trend?

Filming yourself crying for social media engagement has become its own genre at this point — complete with its own aesthetic, its own lighting choices, and its own comment section full of “omg you are SO brave for sharing this.”

The videos follow a pretty reliable structure. Something hard happened, or maybe something vague and undefinable happened, or maybe nothing happened at all but the creator is feeling things. Camera goes on. Tears come. The caption is always some version of “keeping it real with you.”

Here’s what bothers me about that framing: keeping it real and filming it for an audience are two different things.

Is emotional content on social media always fake?

No — and I want to be clear about that, because this is the part people get wrong when they criticize this trend.

There’s a real and important tradition of creators being honest about hard things. I’ve written about difficult stuff on this blog since 2006 and I don’t regret a word of it. Honest storytelling — the messy, specific, uncomfortable kind — is actually one of the few things the internet does right.

But there’s a canyon-wide difference between telling a real story and turning on a camera in the middle of falling apart so you can catch it in real time for content.

One is sharing something you’ve processed. The other is monetizing the moment before you’ve had a chance to feel it.

Why I won’t be participating, ever

I don’t think performing distress is the same as being vulnerable. I really don’t.

Vulnerability — actual vulnerability — is terrifying specifically because you don’t know how it’s going to land. You write something honest and you hit publish and your stomach drops. That’s the feeling. That’s what makes it count.

When you film yourself crying and you KNOW it’s going to get 400,000 views because the algorithm rewards that exact content? That’s not vulnerability. That’s a strategy. And I’m not interested in strategies that involve using my worst moments as a hook.

I’ve been blogging long enough to know the difference between writing from a real place and writing to get a reaction. I’ve done both. Only one of them feels okay to look back on.

The argument FOR this kind of content (and why I still disagree)

Here’s the strongest case the other side makes: people feel less alone when they see someone else in pain. That’s true. Genuinely true. There’s real research on parasocial relationships showing that viewers form meaningful emotional connections with creators, and that seeing someone else struggle can reduce the stigma of struggling yourself.

I get that. I believe it.

But I’d push back on the idea that the medium and the motive don’t matter. A creator who cries on camera every single time something goes sideways — and who checks their analytics afterward to see how it performed — is not the same thing as someone who shares a hard story because it might help. Researchers studying social media and mental health have flagged the feedback loop problem: the platform rewards emotional extremity, which creates an incentive to escalate. That’s not great for the creator, and it’s not great for the people watching.

I can tell you something hard without filming myself in the middle of it. That’s what I’d rather do.

What “keeping it real” actually looks like to me

I’ve written posts on this blog that made my hands shake while I was typing them. I’ve talked about things that were uncomfortable and specific and probably made some readers uncomfortable too.

None of that required a ring light and a camera pointed at my face.

Keeping it real, to me, looks like telling the truth after I’ve had enough distance from something to actually tell it well. It looks like writing the hard post when I know the hard post is the right one, not when I know it’ll perform. It looks like trusting that a well-written, honest paragraph will hit harder than a thirty-second cry clip every single time.

Because it does. It always does.

Does refusing this trend mean I’m out of touch?

Maybe. I’m okay with that.

Influencer culture moves fast and it rewards whoever is willing to give the most — the most access, the most rawness, the most unfiltered version of themselves. I’ve watched creators give and give and give until there’s nothing left that’s actually theirs anymore.

That’s not a path I want. I started this blog because I wanted a place to actually say things, not perform saying things.

If that makes me a little old-fashioned in the content landscape, I can live with it. I’ve been doing this since 2006. I’ve watched a hundred trends come and go — and I’ve written about most of them, like back when I couldn’t stop dissecting why certain things explode online — and the only content I’m proud of is the stuff that was genuinely mine.

Crying into a camera for engagement? That one’s not gonna be mine.

I’m not trying to tell anyone else what to create. People can do what they want, and if it works for them, fine.

But if you’ve ever watched one of those videos and thought — even for half a second — “wait, does this feel a little… off?” You’re not wrong. Your instinct is good. Trust it.

There’s enough real stuff out there worth saying. We don’t need to manufacture the feeling of it.

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