the influencers just admitted they've been lying to us: clap if you're surprised!!

Nothing like the looming threat of deletion to make you spill your guts!

If the final few days of TikTok were to be summed up by one viral sound, there would be only one. Originally performed by Peter Griffin on Family Guy, the sound goes: "Since we're all gonna die, there's one more secret I feel I have to share with you... I did not care for The Godfather."

The premise of the trend on TikTok goes like this: A creator lipsyncs to this sound, and then reveals something they’ve lied about on the app - and it’s often a low-key bombshell exposing that their most popular videos had always been fake.

Some notable lies:

[luce note: I started writing this in New Zealand and planned on linking to all these videos once I landed in the States but when I landed TIKTOK WAS BANNED. SO YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE ME AND MY MEMORY OK.]

• Lexi Hidalgo admitted to never completing the workouts she used to post and never drinking the coffee she used during her coffee chats.

  'There's one more secret I feel I have to share with you. I never once drank the coffee I made in my coffee talks. And only did like half the workouts I posted.'

• Anna Sitar admitted she didn’t actually like coffee when she started doing her ‘viral’ Starbucks taste tests

• Serena Kerrigan told everyone she’d been using Monjauro (like Ozempic) after previously denying it and labelling herself the 'Queen of Confidence.'

• The icebreaker, if you will, was Kaeli Mae, an influencer who built a whole following off by making fancy ice cubes, admitting she had never used any of the ice she had made.

  

• Meredith Duxbury, who became famous for using a crazy amount of foundation on her face, admitted that she “did wipe some of those 10 pumps off...'

  

• Madeleine White spoke about one of her most viral videos where she chopped up a Prada jumpsuit for fashion week, admitting that she "hated how cutting up that Prada look turned out... especially the leg warmers."

Personally, my first reaction to all of these videos was not to feel offended. I did not feel duped, or like I’d had the wool pulled over my eyes all this time. Why? I came of age on the internet, so for as long as I’ve known them, influencers have been synonymous with marketing. To me it was like, “of course they’re lying to us!”

Influencers have been lying to us since I started using the internet. Kim Kardashian didn’t get her body because of a waist trainer or a specific brand of skinny tea. Belle Gibson didn’t have cancer. No one had teeth that white or skin that perfect, that was an app called FaceTune!

It’s still a shame though. The words ‘authenticity’ and ‘relatability’ are the internet’s favourite compliments when we find a new creator to love. The issue with an ‘authentic’ creator rising to fame, however, is that they are no longer “relatable” because eventually, they make enough money that they no longer live like the rest of us. They start getting brand deals and think they’re doing us a favour by giving us a discount code to buy something that we don’t need and they probably (let’s be honest) don’t use. And so the lies begin, and there goes that authenticity.

The world obviously doesn’t work in absolutes. Not everyone is lying. Some people are doing their workouts and drinking their coffee and using the ice cubes they make. But some aren’t. And as the media literate people we are, we know we can’t believe everything we see, even though it would be nice to.

I would, however, like to end my little rant by giving some kudos to one person who did this trend right, and it was perhaps the most famous of them all: Charli D’Amelio.