“All right, guys, I’m just gonna say it, I hate all of the New York influencers, I think they’re all boring as fuck and they’re all carbon copies of one another,” begins the TikTok heard round the five boroughs — and by now, the whole internet. If you’re a Gen-Z or millennial white woman who spends enough time on TikTok, you’ve probably seen a “day in my life” video that unfolds thusly: The girl, who is almost certainly blonde, films herself waking up in a giant white bed, makes an elaborate at-home coffee (strawberry milk seems to be very popular at the moment), heads to Pilates in a matching athleisure set, does a full clean-girl skin-care routine, makes a low-calorie high-protein lunch, sends a few emails, puts on a trendy Revolve outfit, then attends various brand-sponsored events with her fellow influencer friends. (Standard deviations from said routine include trips to Aspen, the Hamptons, Italy, France, or the fancy part of the Caribbean, usually paid for by a brand you may or may not recognize.) Consider her the little sister to that other emblem of white-woman influencerdom, the tradwife, into which she very well might evolve in a few years, if she’s lucky.
To call this faction of content creators “boring” is on its own a quite boring take — but it still managed to spiral into an ongoing discourse. From an explanation from @martinifeeny herself to a guide to the blondes of NYC, here’s what you need to know.
The OG video
The inspiration for the video, creator Bridget (@martinifeeny) tells me, came from her frustration in seeing a certain group of influencers who worked closely with Amazon and had just come from a trip with the brand being “all over” New York Fashion Week in February. “It kind of baffled me,” she says. “I was like, how are these girls sitting front row at shows and then doing Amazon trips? Like, do they even care about fashion? Do they even care about sustainability?”
“I have like 90 followers, I didn’t think anyone would give a damn,” she adds. Alas, they did: Her comments were flooded with people voicing their agreement (sample take: “Their personalities are skin care and cleaning!”) and begging her not to succumb to the inevitable pressure to take down the video once the influencers in question got wind of it. But soon, tons of other TikTokers were making their own videos about the “boring” state of NYC influencing, with many of them pointing out that these criticisms aren’t reflective of the many New York content creators who don’t fit into this niche (more specifically, Black and POC creators, creators who don’t hang out exclusively in downtown Manhattan, and native New Yorkers). One thing about coming for influencers — perhaps the most terminally online people that exist — is that they’re gonna find a way to turn it into content. And boy, have they.
Okay but … who’s she talking about?
Though Bridget never specified individual influencers, those who fit the bill were quick to respond. Acquired Style, the nom de plume of influencer Brigette Pheloung, posted and then deleted a duet mocking Bridget No. 1’s video in which she pretends to be thrilled that Bridget No. 1 referred to her as skinny. Acquired Style is a 27-year-old New York–based former Goldman Sachs associate who has an identical twin, Danielle, who is, of course, also an influencer. They both have bouncy blonde blowouts, live in fancy beige apartments, love to do skin care and cook healthy, work out, travel, and clean. There is so much cleaning, even when the “befores” are never actually that dirty. The Pheloungs are known most recently for sharing one single bra and, on Brigette’s part, for wearing a $9,000 cable-knit gown to her family’s Thanksgiving.
Other influencers believed to be the targets of the video are 24-year-old Halley Kate (full name: Halley McGookin), a fashion influencer who last spring went viral for being one of the several women who were randomly punched in the face on the street and later for buying a house in the Hamptons and a Land Rover on the same day. She, too, is blonde, loves to make coffee, work out, journal, and play with her three mini-dachshunds. Then there’s Kit Keenan, a former Bachelor contestant who bravely admitted to the cardinal sin of the franchise: being there for the “wrong reasons.” She’s also a nepo baby, thanks to mom Cynthia Rowley, and loves — you guessed it — coffee, Pilates, and healthy eating.
Some commenters mentioned a few more blondes who fit the bill and to happen to both be named Audrey: Audrey Peters, the influencer who caused controversy in 2020 for posting an ad for an unpaid intern, Audrey Trullinger, best known on my personal algorithm for being the face (and now voice) of comedian Kyle Gordon’s brilliant musical-parody videos. (These Audreys are not to be confused with Audrey Jongens, who is also blonde and makes up one half of the VIP List girlies, who delightfully rate and review extravagant New York City restaurants while telling their audience to “go cry about it.”)
A few other influencers responded to the video directly, including GabNYC, who dueted Bridget’s video with the caption, “in case you were wondering what being a new york city influencer is like … anyway jealousy is a disease hope this girl gets better soon.” (The snark sub-Reddits, meanwhile, pointed out that she likely doesn’t have a big enough following for anyone to be snarky about, which is, of course, the snarkiest thing you can say about an influencer.) And then there’s token redhead Sophia LaCorte, who last year had major beef with Halley Kate over dating Halley’s ex — the timeline of which is simply too elaborate and convoluted to recall here — but the general gist was that Sophia wasn’t being a “girl’s girl” and came out looking like the villain. “So refreshing to see a hate video that’s not just about me,” she wrote under the original video.
Again, Bridget never mentioned specific influencers, but, she says, “It was about a group of girls I’ve been seeing on my ‘For You’ page that I feel like have been pushed down my throat. I didn’t make it being like, ‘this is about one girl,’ but if the shoe fits …”
How is everyone else responding?
Of course there are parody videos. Mostly though, it’s launched a deeper discourse about influencing in general. Other TikTokers have shared negative experiences meeting or working with this type of influencer, like photographer Olivia Joan, who recalled a nasty interaction she had with one of said “boring NYC influencers.” Many have speculated that she was talking about Acquired Style, whose comment section this week has been flooded with criticism and hate after she posted her response video mocking Bridget. One NYC-based content creator posted a video captioned, “influencers escaped the 9-5 but forgot you can never escape a performance review by those who employ you.” Damn!
Sarah Torkornoo, a native New Yorker, pointed out, “What do you expect when you consistently platform a bunch of upper middle class and wealthy suburban white women? Because as we know, rich people historically are not very cool, and usually they buy their way into coolness or proximity to coolness.” Fashion influencer Mandy Lee said that these “boring” routines are the ones rewarded by both algorithms and brands who pay the creators to promote their products. Considering the job of an influencer is “to make the content that makes you money,” it’s no surprise they all stick to the same general vibe and routine (it’s also not a coincidence that many of them share the same talent manager, Shana Davis-Ross). As another creator who had previously interned in PR mentioned, part of the reason these same influencers are constantly on people’s feeds and constantly hanging out together is because the publicists, marketing, and social-media management teams who determine who gets picked for what brand deal, trip, or ad campaign are largely made up of white women, who are exactly the target audience for this content.
Turns out, boring is profitable!
Like every controversy about influencers, and specifically the aspirational lifestyle variety, what we’re really talking about is who “deserves” to live a life of relative leisure in a time of skyrocketing wealth inequality and an increasingly unstable economy. New York has always had its fair share of conveniently wealthy women whose job is to maintain their physical appearance and attend parties, it’s just that they’ve never been so accessible to those outside of Manhattan. Who gets to live that life — overwhelmingly those who are white, thin, and born into money — has never been fair. But they themselves have never been particularly cool, either: The privilege is that they don’t have to be, because being “boring” is a lot more marketable than being too niche or ahead of your time. The “boring” NYC influencers are basic because there are more people who aspire to the ease of such an existence — a life of Pilates and skin care and bouncy waves and no discernible job. Therefore, it makes for a broader and more profitable audience. In other words, if your following was made up of people who valued their own unique personal style, it’s harder to get them all to buy the same Amazon top.
The “boring” influencers know this, obviously. There’s a fairly good chance that some of them made clapback videos because drama drives engagement. They’re the ones winning in the end, at least on their corner of the internet. But the discourse has had at least one sort of beautiful side effect: Many TikTokers are shouting out NYC-based creators who find distinctly non-boring, who shop sustainably or who have genuinely original personal style. As Bridget, the original video creator says, “You can step out your door and see a million people in a million outfits that were given to them by their grandma, or they thrifted it. I’d rather those people be considered the New York influencers.” Though, of course, the only way to not be a boring NYC influencer is to be cool enough to never post in the first place. Or at the very least, have brown hair.
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“I have like 90 followers, I didn’t think anyone would give a damn,” says @martinifeeny, the TikToker who kicked off the debate.
