Last year, Essena O’Neill’s life fell apart because she was too popular. Buckling under the pressure to perform to her 612,000 Instagram followers, she “outed” posts where she was paid to promote a product, revealed how it took 100 selfies to get a good shot, and then promptly deleted her social media profiles.
Genuine breakdown or public relation stunt (O’Neill launched a site promoting positive living and a vegan diet off the back of the furore), her absolute slating of “fake” content succeeded in causing a ripple across the international press.
O’Neill felt what she was portraying wasn’t ‘authentic’. And, of course, marketing isn’t naturally authentic – brands are tr
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