“I want to talk about something that I feel like maybe is a little controversial,” content creator Jaclyn Hill said in a video posted earlier this week.
The OG beauty influencer got her start on YouTube well over a decade ago. She’s since grown across different social media channels, including Instagram and TikTok, where she has 8.5 million and 1.2 million followers, respectively.
In the video, which has since racked up over 3.5-million views, she opens up about how she’s been struggling to get views on TikTok and feels like she’s “running through mud” to connect with her followers. “When you have a million followers, but you’re getting 30,000 views, this is just not the way it used to be,” she said.
She was right—the video proved controversial. Fans instantly took to the comments to push back at Jaclyn, saying that the influencer was being “out of touch.” One user commented: “Saying ‘I’m burnt out’ from posting Sephora hauls and grwms to employed people is insane.”
Another wrote: “Babe. That sweatshirt is $140. That’s my entire weekly grocery budget that we can afford for our entire family.”
Amid the backlash, an important point has been somewhat lost. Hill was taking issue with low views, a sign that her content is not being shown to those who have chosen to follow her. She was not raising the issue of low engagement, which would have been a sign that her followers were no longer enjoying her content.
Instead, Hill has inadvertently found herself the newest face of a longstanding conversation around influencer fatigue. These feelings have been bubbling for a few years now and every few months resurface in reaction to one viral video or another.
