The Most Shocking Influencer Scandals of the Bloggers Unveiled Era: A Retrospective

Seagulls and sunbeds and smokes (oh my!)

Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash

In August of 2018, Bloggers Unveiled, the controversial Instagram account which had been set up with the stated goal of acting as the “unofficial watchdog” of the Irish influencer and content creator scene¹, posted its last update – and then disappeared entirely.

Depending on whether you counted yourself among the influencers or the influenced, the end of BU was a relief, or a shame; while there was no doubting there was a nasty, gleeful, undertone to its “takedowns” of Irish fashion and beauty influencers (largely young women accused of such egregious crimes as Photoshopping their selfies and lying about their clothing sizes), it was also a great time – perhaps the greatest in living memory?! – for gossip.

There was barely a day that went by without a new “scandal” being “reported on” (inverted commas to signify that the “scandals” in question were not all that scandalous and that BU’s posts could hardly be considered journalism, although now that @houseinhabit is apparently a citizen journalist², maybe I’m wrong?!), and for those of us who thrive on those message threads that ensue after you’ve asked your friends, “any goss?” it was truly a golden era of LOLs.

Timing-wise, too, the demise of BU – which disappeared after a rather fraught campaign wherein some of those influencers who had been targeted by the account tried to “out” the culprit, eventually settling on an unlikely candidate: a beauty therapist from Tullamore who then made the… unexpected decision to speak to the Sunday Times about how, actually, it wasn’t her – was terrible. We didn’t know it then, but with the pandemic coming, we were about to need gossip more than ever before.

Regardless of who was behind the account – which lasted a tragically short time, shutting down after eight months, in which it had amassed more than 220,000 followers – there’s no arguing with the fact that it managed to highlight some frankly delicious stories about bad blogger behaviour that will never, ever be forgotten. By me, anyway.