- Influencers revealed what they’ve lied about to gain millions of fans and careers on TikTok ahead of the U.S. blackout. Now the app is back online and it's time for damage control.
The world as you know it ending seems like the perfect time to finally reveal your deepest, darkest secrets. Faced with the prospect of never seeing their TikTok fans ever again, that’s exactly what U.S.-based influencers did on the platform this weekend.
“I never once drank the coffee I made in my coffee talks,” Lexi Hidalgo admitted to her 2.7 million fans. “And only did, like, half the workouts I posted.”
The admission was pretty stark, given that the yoga instructor and influencer rose to fame with her “coffee talk” videos—but she was just one of thousands of TikTokers to admit that their some of their most popular videos were fake less than 24 hours after the Chinese-owned app went dark for U.S. users on Sunday.
Some fitness influencers admitted that their perky glutes were courtesy of a Brazilian butt lift—not their workout videos. Others admitted their skits were staged.
One TikToker, @kaelimaee, who became famous for making fancy, elaborate ice cubes often filled with fruits and flowers, admitted that she didn’t even use them. Meanwhile, Meredith Duxbury, who went viral for doing makeup routines where she put 10 pumps of foundation on her face, revealed that she sometimes wiped the foundation off. But she captioned it: “Or did I?”
They were all jumping on the latest trend and sharing their lies to the soundtrack of Peter Griffin from Family Guy saying: “Since we're all gonna die, there's one more secret I feel I have to share with you.”
But since then, the newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump has thrown TikTok a lifeline, bringing the app back to life for now at least—and leaving influencers, who have opened their accounts to an army of angry fans, backtracking on their confessions.
Hell hath no fury like a TikTok fan scorned
TikTok viewers are outraged that they fell for the lies. A Canadian user, Ashley Robbins, posted on the platform that people should think twice about following influencers who exposed the “crap they did to get you guys to follow them and fall in love with them.”
“Let this be a word to the wise, you should look into the integrity of these people before you put them up on a pedestal, make their head explode, and then come to find out that they are monetizing off of lies and tricking you for years at a time.”
Another user posted a video slamming the trend as “sickening.”
"The amount of influencers that have come forward saying, 'Oh, I never actually did those workouts I told you guys to do' or 'never even liked coffee, I just forced myself to drink it for videos,' et cetera. So many influencers just admitted to profiting off of society's own insecurities and they think it's totally fine,” @elissaleanne shared in a series of videos.
Since posting her confession, Hidalgo has backtracked on her claims and even apologized for hurting her fans' feelings.
“I did the workouts. Just not when I posted them. I was a kid on a brand-new app. I didn't know better yet,” she posted in one follow-up video. Hidalgo didn't respond to Fortune's request for comment.
Skip damage control: "Go for more grime, more dirt, more disbelief," expert says
Hidalgo isn’t the only influencer to regret hopping on the trend and swiftly post a retraction video—but they shouldn't worry, says Ben Alalouff, chief strategy officer at the marketing agency Live & Breathe. In his eyes, influencers’ controversial confessions will make—not break—their careers.
“I think they were probably a well-considered gamble on TikTok surviving the U.S. flip-flopping government—and a gamble with a supreme payoff: massive attention from us, obsessed with the most sordid aspects of others' lives,” he tells Fortune.
“We are gluttons for other people's experience,” he says, adding that influencers won’t even need to earn back followers’ trust because their latest controversial videos will throw their faces onto the feeds of potential new fans anyway.
“The more sordid, the more shocking, the more gasp-invoking the reveal was, the longer they’ll get the all-powerful algorithm spotlighting their content,” he adds. “It’s less about building back trust, more about conserving views—which doesn’t necessarily have to mean protecting a ‘good’ virtue like trust.”
His advice for influencers (or brands) looking for damage control? “Sack off trust. Go for more grime, more dirt, more disbelief. And then maybe a little redemption arc later this year.”
