TikTok’s De-Influencers Tell You What Not to Buy

“There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve purchased that is just total crap, so I thought I’d share it,” Kromelis says. “I just wanted to help people save some money because I’m a penny-pincher myself.” In her first video, she rattled through expensive hair and face products that people should not buy—yet she also recommended cheaper alternatives. Critics have noted that de-influencers target overconsumption by encouraging other, different kinds of consumption. 

“I mean, I totally agree with that,” Kromelis says, “That’s the awkward paradox of the whole thing.” While Kromelis appreciates that it may seem odd for de-influencers to recommend products, she wants to “share knowledge.” Ironically, she says, her de-influencing videos have turned her from a “content creator” into an influencer—while she earned her initial 30,000 TikTok followers from “random stuff that I would post about my life,” she now regularly posts about products instead.

“I posted [my first de-influencing] video on a Wednesday, and by Monday morning, I had two packages at my door,” Kromelis says. “One of them, I don’t know how they found me.” Kromelis is open to being paid to promote products, provided it’s by “a brand that I actually like and a product that I actually have used.”

It is possible that this entire trend is just a flash in the (eyeshadow) pan, but Kromelis believes that even when hashtag #deinfluencing dies, an appetite for authenticity and “hilarious” brutal honesty will remain. Palermino posted on Instagram that the de-influencing trend feeds an appetite for negativity, and that she personally will not believe that de-influencing exists until it is nuanced—not excessively positive or negative—reviews that thrive. 

Tearing down influencers has long been a favorite pastime of the internet, and now netizens are tearing down individual products, too. Yet the beauty industry as a whole still stands. 

“I don’t think influencers will ever materially affect the beauty industry in terms of lessening consumerism,” says Jessica DeFino, an anti-product beauty reporter who publishes a newsletter of beauty-critical content. “I don’t think this backlash is real at all.”

DeFino explains that there is nothing new about claiming beauty products don’t work—and in fact, such claims can help companies launch new and “improved” products.  

“There are so many beauty products precisely because there are so many that ‘don’t work,’” DeFino says, “That’s the thing about innovation and optimization: They require flawed and faulty products as a jumping-off point.”

For DeFino, the de-influencing trend is just that: a trend. “The beauty space has been engaged in this push-pull of more versus less for years now,” she says, noting that 10-step skincare routines made way for “skipcare” and “skinimalism.” 

“Both instances were ultimately excuses to sell more products—but different products, with more of a minimalist aesthetic,” DeFino says. “Consumers fall for it every time, and often feel self-righteous in doing so because they’ve adopted the aesthetic of ‘less,’ if not the ideology.”