I work for a company that books luxury travel, think $20000 packages. A woman contacted us wanting a free trip in exchange for posting it on her blog, proudly proclaiming that she had 800 followers. My coworkers' dog photo account has more followers.

A new local tv anchor woman was trying to pay for her dinner at a restaurant with a check. Restaurant doesn't take checks, it's posted all over the front door she walked through. She stands up and starts screaming at the waitress "Do YOU know who I AM?!?" The waitress says no and walks off to get her manager. She didn't get to pay with a check... Two weeks later, the same anchor woman comes into the department store I worked at. She has a mound of clothes in her arms and throws them on the counter and asks what kind of discount she gets for being a local celebrity. My co-worker tells her such thing does not exist. She pushes the pile of clothes off of the counter and tells my co-worker that she needs to learn how to treat the upper class better. She's not our local tv anchor woman anymore.

I worked as a hairstylist (certified but can’t do it anymore due to nerve damage) and this lady made an appointment for her newly 1 year old child. At first, all she wanted for him was to clean up around the ears and neck because it was getting kind of long. Kid is SCREAMING. This is his first haircut ever. I’m being super patient and slow. It was my last one of the day so I’m not worried about time. She then says “I’m an influencer and I take photos of my kids all day. I need this to look perfect. This is his first haircut and you’re f*****g it up.” So to try and calm her down while also still keeping my composure, I asked, “oh, an influencer? What do you do? Like what platform?” And she looked me dead in my eyes and said, “well I gained fame because my daughter died.” ….. I got silent from there. But just as we were starting to finish up, she says, “I hate it. Can you do a skin fade on him?” Girl HES 1!! He’s screaming at scissors. I’m not taking loud clippers next to his head. I tried to explain that if he moves while I have clippers near him like that, it could just make it even worse. I told her there’s a barber shop right across the street if she wanted to try going there. She took photos of me without knowledge or permission and posted them on her instagram (100k followers) and bashed me. I was 20 and had just graduated hair school. I did tell her that before to the appointment as well. When she posted photos of his head the next day, not only had he just woken up so his hair was messy, it also looked like she had tried to “fix” it at home. The other (senior) stylist that had been with me in the salon during the whole thing saw how I did his hair and she was shocked at the posted photos because it is not how I did it. It still cracks me up a few years later, but now I don’t trust mommy bloggers

I was at a birthday party at a very popular restaurant that had a huge line out the door all night, every night. When the reservation was made, the host was warned that 30 minutes past that time slot, anyone who hasn’t showed up yet would have to wait in line with everyone else. Of course, some people showed up super late, made a scene at the door, and texted the host to tell them that they were just going to go to another party instead because the line was too long. The host decided the best way to handle this would be to go on social media and encourage his followers to @ the restaurant and make wildly false accusations. The host and his friends were boasting that the restaurant had no idea who they were messing with and would surely regret this once it blew up on social media due to his “very large following”. The owner of the restaurant got a notification about the mention and knew it was our table because the host had already complained about the bouncer. The owner came over to very politely explain the reservation policy and ask that the comment be taken down since the restaurant did nothing wrong and this was uncalled for. The keyboard warriors shrank like children being scolded by their parents; I don’t think I’ve ever had more second-hand embarrassment.

There's a kid I work with who's (I believe) 7 years old, and he's a "YouTube influencer." By that, I mean the kid's parents made a YouTube channel that follows the same format as stuff like Ryan's World, got lucky with one video that got around 10,000 views (all of their others barely have a hundred), and it immediately went to their head. The kid's dad refers to himself as his "manager" and answers questions on the kid's behalf, they hand out business cards with all their social media info, and they even GOT THE KID'S NAME LEGALLY CHANGED to the name he uses on YouTube. The worst part is the kid seems indifferent at best to all of this. It's 100% his parents pushing it on him.

My daughter got 20k followers on TikTok and decided to leave her husband and 6 year old daughter to go be part of the convention circuit. She dresses up and gushes about meeting "famous" people.

Oh I've been sitting on this for a while, waiting for the perfect moment... So before TikTok, we had Vine. A girl I was friends with posted a few videos on there and they blew up, I mean really blew up. She was interviewed by a tv station at one point and newspapers, done sketches for the local radio station... And for Scotland, that was pretty shocking because we don't normally do well in this sort of thing. She quit her managerial job in a supermarket, convinced that she was going to be famous from Vine, this was when being an "influencer" or "content creator" was relatively new. She cut everyone out of her life that was dragging her down, that included me, someone who had been friends with her for around 7 years at that point. Long story short, she failed. She now works in a nightclub on the bar, she had three months of fame before she realised no one gave a s**t about the videos and she couldn't come up with anything funny to write and star in after it. * Oh before I forget, she auditioned for the Star Wars movie when they done open auditions here, and she legit put on her headshot - "model, actress, vine star"

A guy from my hometown who was sort of a skeezeball helped some elderly folks escape a fire. The act itself was commendable and he deserved the recognition he received in local media and he went viral for a week or two but uh….5 plus years after the fact he was still using that as a way to try to get out of tickets or being cut off at the local bars after refusing to pay tabs. My brother encountered his Instagram recently and his self description says something like “Unspoken hero, DM me for details” lmao

In college, a girl I knew was elected Student Body Vice President. She almost instantaneously became the most insufferable person I've ever met, complaining about the plight of having the lives of 20000 people rest "in her hands." She would use it to try and get better service at restaurants. It was like something out of a comedy. We stopped being friends with her.

Friend was in a video at a car meet that went viral back say 2011-2012. He said like 8 words and couldn’t see him but you could hear him. He would go around telling people after he is “famous” for being in a viral YouTube video. I was like “if you have to announce you are famous, you might not be as famous as you think Broski”

Not a friend of mine, but someone I know through a mutual friend. He's a 'streamer' and occasionally he will hop in discord with us to talk with said mutual friend. But, being a 'streamer', he's pretty much always streaming whenever he's on/gaming... And he will talk to his stream while sitting in our discord, won't even mute himself, and will literally just talk over other peoples' conversations in discord. And some of us will rightfully be like "wtf?" and his response is always "can't help it guys, I'm a streamer, can't leave my stream hanging"... His stream will literally have like 5-10 viewers max at any given time, and he's been streaming for years. Its f*****g embarrassing and everyone ridicules him. Him being IRL friends/coworkers with the previously mentioned mutual friend is the only reason anyone *tolerates* his presence. And I use *tolerate* extremely loosely, everyone hates him and wants him blocked, but we're all good friends with the mutual friend, so no one is trying to stir up s**t over that idiot since he only occasionally comes around.

I used to answer the unsolicited submissions email box for a very large consumer products company - basically the address where people sent in ideas, be they marketing or products or whatever. I can’t tell you the number of people who tried to sell us a license to their “hit viral song” that had “nearly 10,000 views on YouTube.” I appreciate the hustle but no one is paying to use a song with 10,000 YouTube plays. That is not “viral” or “famous.”

I used to have a friend that became one of the most insufferable [jerks] you could imagine because he got 200 followers on Instagram

I saw someone once act like they controlled the whole internet in person, threatening to show videos she recorded to her "legion of fans". She had 1,000 followers. On Instagram. No other big followings.

A classmate of mine got invited to a pyramid scheme through Instagram. She started planning her entire influencer career. Got real mad when I wrote an extensive explanation on what a pyramid scheme is, and showed her I’d gotten dozens of those DM’s before.

Back in the day when I played WOW there was a guy on my server who had a tiny amount of name recognition. He was good at the game and spent a lot of time and energy organizing things. People on the server knew him and would ask for his help, or show him deference in order to get his attention on things. One day he put together an optional raid and at the end of the raid a particularly rare item dropped. Instead of an open roll - which was the standard at the time - he simply gave the item to his friend. When people complained, he said something like, "I'm so and so, I'm the most important raid leader on this server, you're all lucky to even be here right now, so shut up and deal with it." Well screenshots were taken and links were sent around. Dude ended up transferring off the server less than a week later because nobody would give him the time of day.

I worked with a guy and every time he met someone new he had to tell them he was an actor. He had a YouTube channel with 47 subscribers and called himself something embarrassing for a man his age.

Just go to any anime conventions, some volunteer staffers would abuse the slightest amount of power they have to make everyone's life difficult. This isn't just the ones you see on the floor but it can go all the way to the top of the food chain. Don't trust me? Go volunteer at your closest anime convention, you will be disgusted. I knew a guy who was probably bullied all his life but he had a high ranking position at the local con. He once fired a volunteer because they looked at him the wrong way. That being said, I did meet some really good and kind hearted people volunteering. The sad thing is that they eventually get burnt out by those assholes.

Ages ago the Washington Post used to have a free tabloid, one page featured quotes from various local blog posts. My blog would get quoted sometimes and I'd think it was sort of neat, but some of the other bloggers got OBSESSED and would, like, go scoop up a thousand copies of the tabloid to hoard because they were now Famous Bloggers.

I started a fantasy football podcast with some friends a few years ago and after one episode with like 5 plays, I thought, “Man, this is easy. We’ll get big in no time.” So I talked to the guys about setting up a Patreon and seeing what they thought about talking to fantasy football platforms to be their official podcast lol. The high of sharing something you created with the world like it’s god’s gift to mankind. We went on to do the show for a couple years and definitely tempered our expectations after a few episodes, but it was a lot of fun either way.

An Ex of mine ran a Pokémon RP forum in the late 2000s, even designed the art for Fakemons of her own and coded the site and everything. And boy howdy, did she think she was an absolute GOD to the like, 6 people that used that forum. Nobody even inflated her ego about it, it was as if she had stuck a bicycle pump directly to her head and never stopped pumping. In a non-negative context she really did put A LOT of effort into the site and art and lore and I understand why she was disappointed all that work never amounted to anything but she took everything as an almost literal, purposeful attack on her digital baby. Her one Mod wasn't present for the site's official Launch Date and you'd have thought the Mod tossed her dog off a bridge. Again, she had ever right to be proud of the work she put in, honestly it was pretty great and took a lot of time and dedication- but it really, really went to her head and ego. Hell I even got scolded for not attending opening day- a date I wasn't even told about.

My best friend made a Twitch and started streaming 3 nights out of the week. In the beginning he was cool and would ask to hang out every so often. After getting 200 followers on Twitch, he just sits in his basement and streams every day. Not really reaching out or saying hi every so often.

This girl I went to school with was an... aspiring actress. She was in some low quality YouTube short film and she basically was trying to convince everyone that she was famous and that all these companies wanted her because of it. She even had these head shots that she would bring into class to show everyone... and nobody cared. She really thought she was better than everyone and even acted like a celebrity. Like she would come in with sunglasses and basically treat everyone as if they shouldn't even be breathing the same air as her. It was honestly sad.

The guy who turned Keanu Reeves calling him breathtaking once at a cyberpunk showcase into his entire brand, even making merch about the situation

Mid 00's - a guy who had a show on the college radio station. Not the FM station, the internet one that played on channel 42 on campus TVs. He insisted that I must have heard his show, kept telling me his name was “Juice.” Sometimes I wonder how Juice ended up.

There's a girl locally in a small band. The sort of small local band even local people don't know the name of, but about 7 years ago she opened up for a few c list acts at nearby venues. There were a few YouTube videos that got a decent amount of traction. Not loads, but maybe 100,000 views or so. She got a few messages ( 2 or 3) on Facebook from " fans". So she changed her name on Facebook to stay anonymous. She hasn't even played anything now for a couple of years but anytime anyone talks to her about anything it's all " I have to work so hard to protect my self and make sure to never use my real name with people till I trust them. I get the fake name on Facebook thing. No judgement from me for that. Plenty of teacher friends do similar, but it's the constant monologue of " im such a public figure, people will stalk me, I'm such a celebrity, I have to shop online" when actually, no one knows or cares.

Knew a guy who wrote a blog for a year, about an unfocused hodge-podge of subjects but mostly dating. Highest readership was like... maybe 12k. Never managed to monetize it. This guy thought he was god's gift to writing. He wouldn't help other writers because it'd be too embarrassing. He would sneer at copywriting job opportunities because they never paid good enough for him because after all, he wrote a blog for a year.

I remember this guy about a decade ago (forgot his name) who did some comedy videos, but mostly made super niche metal music that was themed around some heavy handed fantasy story he wrote ("the Thalrogs are fighting the Bromthean war against the Melohomiroglites," type s**t). Anyways, he had like 10k subs and then one day uploaded a video basically yelling at his fans and blaming them for not making him a famous rockstar. Totally missing the forest for the trees saying things like "you all just want my comedy videos but none of you buy my music, f**k you," over and over again on video before shutting down his channel.

My sister brought home this weird guy she met on a dating website. He was bragging all night about being a rapper (he's white from a white as f**k town) and having a YouTube video (just one not many) with 25,000 views on it. I just shrugged it off because I have like 10 videos about playing Lego games and Toy Story games where I post tricks or tips on how to get certain hard to get things. All of them have 100,000+ views. I even have like 1000+ subscribers (no bragging from me. They are all 6-12 year old kids). Anyways. I find his video and it's bad. He rented a limo and made his own music video of a song he did. So bad. And he did it in his white as f**k town. So bad. 25000 views and he's now walking around on clouds like he's made it in the rap game.

Salt bae. Sorry.