The downfall of brendahashtag

Be careful of your own lore.

The below essay is from i-D’s “CONFESSIONAL” zine, created in collaboration with Substack. It features ten never-before-told confessions by some of our favorite Substack creators. The Zine is now sold out online and in-stores, but we’ll be releasing them all this week, exclusively on i-D’s Substack.

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I was missing lore; a crucial ingredient of being in the public eye. I might have shared some controversial opinions on my social media, but compared to other rising stars of the niche high-fashion pond I was dipping my toes into, I was an unseasoned chicken.

They say, “Go with the times or the times go without you.” And we are in a time where people need to care deeply about you in order to not fall into irrelevance. Having fans is not enough; you need to have haters, too. People have different opinions on when exactly we have entered the post-truth era, but most would agree that a healthy level of controversy contributes to your worth. Pull, buzz, social currency—if your name is mentioned at a dinner party, could people have a heated discussion about you, or would the conversation die down within two minutes?

The next morning I woke up to a link to a “brendahashtag” Reddit thread. Did you know that Reddit––a platform used both by edgelords looking for valuable information on biohacking, alternative methods for raising children, and insecure millennials with nine to five jobs who feel better about their own miserable existence by bringing others down in anonymous forums––is owned by Advance Publications, which owns Condé Nast? We can talk about that another day.

I was excited at first. Finally people cared about me! There is a subreddit called “NYC influencer snark” (snark, what a great word btw), and if you are a New York-based influencer who doesn’t have their own subsubreddit in the subreddit, you should consider hiring a publicist, because you are close to obsolescence. You definitely won’t get the backstage TikTok-interview gigs for Tory Burch, WSA won’t host your closet sale for free, Charli XCX won’t ask you to appear in one of her music videos, and ThePeopleGallery won’t ask you for your outfit details on the street, because you have no sauce. No street cred.

The queen, in this case, being Reddit users. To be honest, it could have also been one Reddit user with several accounts. The Cut came out with an article this year (https://www.thecut.com/article/reddit-influencer-snark-confessions.html) interviewing the anon users about why they hate with a passion and what they get out of it. Surprisingly, the users were a bit older than we had all assumed. While Gen Z is pretty busy with online activism, the subreddit users were often in their 30s, with real jobs, tired of watching ungrateful influencers (me) live their dream. Because they would live it so much better.

My excitement about my snarky thread wore off pretty quickly when I realised how low these users would go—and also how far from reality they were at times. With enough therapy sessions under my belt, I know that when I get offended over something that concerns my persona, there is some truth to it. “Snobbish,” “arrogant,” and “pretentious” were some of the recurring words used to describe me. Your Honour, the evidence clearly shows that the defendant is guilty of every charge she stands accused of. I am arrogant AF. Sometimes I still shock myself when I hear my own thoughts, even after living with this brain for over 30 years. All I do is judge all day, but at least I don’t spare myself from said judgement either.

I have a double-barrel last name, and both names are attached to two very successful family businesses. Weischer, the family on my dad’s side, is a media company in Germany that acts as a special agent for outdoor advertising in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). I read on my Reddit that my dad is the most powerful man in German media and that he got me all my jobs, even my first ever interview, which was with Virgil Abloh. While neither of these things is true (he has not heard of Virgil Abloh nor is he the media mogul of Germany), he did pay my rent until I was 25 years old and helped with paying for my university degrees. (To clarify for the Americans: the student loans where I live are not as bad as yours. My dad covered my bachelor’s degree in Berlin, which I believe was 20K; I then covered my Central Saint Martins master’s—I think it was less than 10K, a European fee that was still a pre-Brexit amount.) I had all expenses covered and my retail jobs were merely play money for Berghain weekends and EasyJet trips. If I lost all of my jobs from one day to the other, “Daddy’s money” would surely come to the rescue.

My other last name reads way worse. It is a successful, legacy family business in shirtmaking—that is prominent in the fashion industry. I have the name through my mother, who cut contact with her family when I was an infant, so I have only met a few family members in my childhood; I have never seen any money from that family or used the name for anything. At least one DEBUNKED! I gave some super-stupid quote to a magazine one time after they asked me if I grew up with fashion, explaining that I lived with a single mother as a kid who was sometimes on government support and there was no time to think about fashion choices. It wasn’t a lie, but I left out my rich dad, who I saw only during school holidays for the first decade of my life. So I gave a half-truth. This is what came back to haunt me on Reddit. While I do regret the interview, rule number one of the internet is never apologise or argue with strangers who won’t change their opinion of you. They aren’t booking your jobs, after all. If you hired a McKinsey consultant for your Reddit crisis management, they would tell you that fighting for your life in the comment sections is a high-risk, zero-reward situation.

Anyhow. Like most privileged kids, at least the ones who are willing to look at their own inherited advantages, realising that I am privileged did not immediately make me a better, more grateful, self-aware, humble person. Almost daily I have to accept that I have a step up in life and that the things I am proud of were achieved with help. That the underdog story that I like to believe about my own career was not as challenging as other people’s. My own lore is made up—by me.

I am known as the outspoken one in fashion, yet I can afford to be outspoken because I have a safety net to fall back on. It’s simply not the same as other creators who risk it all. The Reddit thread said that I was incapable of receiving criticism. And it’s true, I run my social media like a dictator. On any given day, I block and restrict people simply because I can. I think of it this way: my accounts are free, not paywalled. I try to give industry knowledge and entertainment, and in return I want you to leave heart comments. If you fail to hold up your end of the bargain, you will be shunned from the kingdom that is Brendahashtagland. I am in constant war with parasocial relationships between audience and content creators, and I make it very clear who is the messenger and who is the receiver. I do not ask to receive, I am a top. You can see yourself out.

Another thing I read about myself was that I’m “selling out.” I do not understand why people assume that just because I write for media outlets, I have the journalistic integrity of a reporter at The New York Times. I am not @VVfriedman!!!!! I’ll post your collection for a paycheck—DM for more info. I never call myself a journalist; I have a master’s in fashion journalism from Central Saint Martins; the two are not the same! I write for money, I write for clout, I write for fun, and sometimes I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me. I danced around in Maria Grazia Chiuri Dior for my Haute Couture tickets, and I’d do it again!

The anon user’s point of view is that they wouldn’t. If they were the millionaire daughter of Germany’s most powerful media mogul, they’d give it all to charity, or to Daniel Roseberry. They wouldn’t even think of entering the fashion industry. They would make space for talented writers and designers, and they wouldn’t say yes to their dream career if they were offered it, because other non-nepo-babies are more deserving.

I recently listened to The Cutting Room Floor podcast, where Paloma Elsesser gave her point of view about people saying what they would do if they were in her shoes––and it spoke to me. If you weren’t offered the job, the campaign, or the cover, then you don’t get to have an opinion of what I did with an opportunity that was presented to me. The anon users will not accept the reality of the media landscape we live in; it’s not about who says it in the most eloquent way, it’s about who screams the loudest. I happen to bring clicks, shares, and comments, which more often than not drown out the thoughts and knowledge of better writers. It is what it is!

I get it. It’s fucking shitty to see shitty people be successful. Expecting people to be happy for you at a time when most are just getting by is just not realistic. And I don’t know why I thought I’d get some Pulitzer Prize for saying that a Jacquemus collection was bad. That’s low-hanging fruit.

By the summer of last year, the lore I had so desperately wished for had taken over. I had TikTok and YouTube creators taking deep dives into “the downfall of brendahashtag.” Combing through several Reddit threads, I began to believe that the general public hated me. In the same week, my management signed a contract for me to have a shoe with Adidas, I had invites to all the fashion shows I wanted to attend, was flown around the world by brands, and was presented with more work opportunities than ever. The seasoning in the form of gossip added to the uncooked chicken seemed to work, with my own ego as collateral damage. One year ago I stopped looking up my own name in Google searches, forums, or any social media. While I know that the lore around me somehow ends up contributing positively to my worth, I can’t handle the heat, and I am staying the fuck out of the kitchen.

Is there a moral to this story? Not really. I faced the reality that I am not the victim in this situation. Nothing unfair was happening to me. My entire life is unfair to other people and will remain this way unless I give it all up and live in exile. I faced my own desire of wanting to be liked, approved, and made to feel worthy by strangers. And I learned that most bad press is indeed good press. Now the challenge is to feed the beast.

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Brenda Weischer is a fashion influencer and writer based between Berlin and New York. She is the host of her weekly podcast “brendawareness,” where she talks about her own career and the inner workings of the fashion industry.