Long read: She was one of the first influencers. It nearly ruined her life.

This is the first in-depth account we have read of what happens to an influencer’s life when she actually becomes successful in her job. Rachel Tashjian’s long article on American influencer Lee Tilghman’s life (based partly on Ms Tilghman’s autobiography “If you don’t like this, I will die”) gives us a glimpse into how social media is able to package and sell an influencer’s humanity to the point were she’s living an utterly abnormal life (but influencing other people into believing otherwise).

Ms Tashjian’s article begins by asking difficult questions:

“For influencers — the backbone of an industry Goldman Sachs said was worth approximately $250 billion in 2024 and projects to grow to almost $500 billion by 2027 — the question of posting is particularly fraught. Who owes you — in money, free product or clout? And what do you owe your followers: Reliable advice? A fantasy? Your entire life?”

Ms Tashjian then focuses on the specifics of Lee Tilghman’s influencing:

“For Lee Tilghman, known online as Lee From America and one of the first women to build an empire-worthy Instagram following of more than 370,000 people as a wellness influencer, she is at last posting from a place of purity. “Posting has been, for me, at least since October, something I’m only doing out of my own joy,” said Tilghman, 35, speaking on a bench in Brooklyn Heights on a sweltering day in late July.

Tilghman, as the inventor of the viral smoothie bowl and peddler of philosophies and products that, when done together, she now admits were extreme, has been through the gamut of online women’s experiences. She became a celebrity followed by many but known only to a niche audience. She received free stuff from famous millennial brands — then was paid to post about it. She invented a viral food, the aforementioned smoothie bowl. She was canceled. She logged off forever. She logged back on, revealing a crazy new haircut, and people unfollowed her. She shared her story of feeling limited by her personal brand to such an extent that it led to an eating disorder relapse. She got a normal job.”

Ms Tilghman explains to Ms Tashjian that in her book she has laid out how much of a psychological toll influencing exerts:

““Most people can only handle one side of a public figure. They can’t handle a whole person. I kind of describe it as a hexagon. We’re all hexagons. We all have multiple sides, multiple facets,” she said, immaculately groomed…

“But when you’re an influencer, you have to be, ‘What are you in one sentence? I am a wellness girl. I am a travel influencer. I do makeup in under five minutes. I do beach skin care. I do New England. I’m coastal granddaughter. I’m Rodeo Malibu Barbie influencer.’

“And that has not changed: the public’s necessity to have you be your elevator-pitch person.”…

Tilghman’s book lays out the reality that being an influencer is a total bore. Being a person, whether private or public, is much more interesting. But can we see influencers as people?…

You read the running list of brands and tasks and the never-ending demands of posting — and feel empty, much as Tilghman did.”

What’s interesting about Ms Tilghman is that she’s actually a talented writer and her writing skills not only predate her influencing career, those skills were central to her success as an influencer:

“Tilghman studied creative writing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, and, from her blog beginnings, her ability to tell a compulsively readable story was clear. Agents had approached her about book projects when she was at the peak of her Instagram powers…

“Funnily enough,” Tilghman said, “when I stopped influencing, that’s when this book came to me.””

Ms Tilghman then points out that writing books too is a form of influencing. It is different from posting on X but as we at Marcellus understand all too well, a book can be as powerful a form of influencing as social media post. Ms Tilghman says that influencing through writing is far more interesting than interesting through social media posts:

““I think of it as an evolution,” she clarified. “I guess I am still influencing — 100 percent. I mean, that era when I was in such a routine, and it was like a channel: weekly recipes, updates, self-care tips, everything updates. I was posting on [Instagram] Stories nine times a day, every day, and then three or four times on the grid per day.

“In a lot of ways, for these brands, you’re just kind of an actor. You have to act. Especially on these brand trips, where you’re paid to look like you’re having a good time.””

Towards the end of the article, comes the punchline – social media is here to stay and all of us – at some level – are influencers. All you and I get do is decide what we want to post on and how we want to influence the world through our posts. You can post about breakthroughs in quantum computing or you can post about the latest headphones you have purchased. The choice is ours and we should be at many levels be happy that such a choice has been created by the American tech giants:

“Perhaps Tilghman’s realest and most relatable quality is that she loves to post. When she sold her book two years ago, she was no longer active on social media…

The neat ending to the memoir would be to conclude that social media is evil and that she (and we) must never post again. “I believe that social media isn’t going anywhere. Technology is not going anywhere,” she said.

Tilghman considered not using social media to promote her book. After all, she had gone viral for leaving Instagram in 2023 and was afraid that followers would criticize her for reneging on her promise to “de-influence.” But then she realized: “You know what? I’ve spent so much time on this book. I’m going to do everything I can to make this book a super success. I’m going to use my audience that gave me this book deal. They are a big part of the story.

“The biggest difference is that I don’t have a manager or agent on my phone saying, ‘Hey, have you posted the Stories?’ … It’s just on me.”

The shift in algorithms from a feed ordered by the time of posts to a discovery-based algorithm that surfaces content by mysterious means has given us much more anxiety around sharing online, said Rachel Karten, a social media consultant. “There wasn’t this jet-fueled algorithm that exists today” when Tilghman was influencing. “The algorithms now can turn anyone into an influencer overnight.

“There’s a certain level of cringe to posting,” Karten continued. “Because of the way the algorithm works, it makes it seem like you’re trying to become an influencer, even if you’re just innocuously posting or sharing vacation photos, because that’s the way that [influencing] starts now.””

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