Guys. Please. The Light.

It’s Nyepi, Bali’s Day of Silence. The one day a year the island shuts down. No flights, no lights, no leaving the house. Even the mobile data goes dark. The whole island plays dead, so the evil spirits flying over think nobody lives there.

I’m spending it at Tribal, a coworking hostel near Canggu. A coworking hostel. On the one day nobody is supposed to work.

And somewhere in the dark, someone is filming a video. With a flashlight. To tell their followers that it’s the Day of Silence.

Then someone walks over and says it: “Guys. Please. The light.”

That’s why people hate influencers.

Well. That’s one of the reasons. And it’s the only one I fully agree with.

Because influencer hate has two faces. Only one of them is honest.

Face one: “That’s not a real job”

The first kind of hate is about money. Someone films themselves drinking a matcha, gets paid for it, and half the internet takes it personally.

The assumption: influencers get money for nothing. For being pretty. For holding a phone.

What people don’t see is the work. Understanding what makes someone stop scrolling. Testing. Failing in public. Doing it again tomorrow. There’s craft behind it, and a lot of psychology. Looking effortless is part of the effort.

(Same story with OnlyFans, by the way. But that’s a whole other article.)

Face one, in a nicer outfit: “They just got lucky”

Then there’s the more generous crowd. They’re fine with influencers making money. They’ve just found a politer way to shrink it: “They were early. They got lucky.”

Being early isn’t a lottery ticket. It’s a bet. Back then, posting your life for a handful of strangers looked ridiculous, not visionary. Plenty of people were early. Most of them aren’t influencers today. We just never see the ones who quit.

There’s a name for that: survivorship bias. Most people prefer a different name. Luck.

And luck is just a nicer way of saying it doesn’t count.

Face two: the eye roll

But even the people who respect the work still roll their eyes when they spot one in the wild.

Why?

Because influencers influence in another way, too. Not just their followers. The room.

I work in cafés. Quiet ones, on purpose.

Then someone walks in and starts setting up. Camera here. No, there. Can we move this table? They negotiate with the staff for the perfect angle. “It’s just two minutes.” It is never two minutes.

Meanwhile, you’re trying not to end up in the background of someone’s content. You didn’t agree to be in it. Nobody asked.

And even after the filming stops, something stays. A room full of people quietly doing their thing has become a set. Everyone else has become extras.

The actual problem

So no, I don’t think people hate influencers because they make money. That’s the excuse. Envy dressed up as principle.

The eye roll is about something else: treating shared space like a private studio. The flashlight on Nyepi. The tripod in the quiet café. The moment someone’s content matters more than everyone else’s afternoon.

And you don’t need followers to do it. In March 2026, a Swiss tourist left his villa on Nyepi after the staff had explained the rules, walked to an empty beach, and filmed himself describing the scene as “crazy.” Plus a few expletives. For Instagram. Balinese residents complained. In August, a court in Denpasar sentenced him to a year in prison.

He wasn’t an influencer. He was a 26-year-old construction worker on vacation.

That’s not an influencer problem. It’s a manners problem.

Influencers just do it with a ring light.