From racism to The Savoy: The biggest influencer scandals there have been in 2022

Influencers. They so rarely get it right, and crash and burn when they get it wrong. 2022 has seen a whole host of influencer scandals, where those with the most followers really should have paused for a moment before they hit publish, or have had their pasts catch up with them.

This year influencers have missed the mark, been outright offensive, and have shown they are so out of touch they should deactivate their accounts, for everyone’s sake. Here are all the biggest influencer scandals there have been in 2022.

Elle Darby

It was literally a matter of days into the New Year of 2022 when the first of many influencer scandals happened. Right at the start of January, racist and hateful tweets YouTuber Elle Darby previously made resurfaced.

In one tweet from 2011, she wrote: “This bus is sweaty and stinks of Indians.” Another tweet from the same year said: “Squinting like a Chinese man because this cursing bus hasn’t got any curtains to hide the sun and all that fuckery.” And in a third tweet from 2011, she said: “So I hope the Polish twat driving my bus this morn who nearly kicked me off because I didn’t have my pass crashes when he’s dropped me at school.”

In true influencer style, she later posted a YouTube video apologising for the tweets, where she said “there are no words” to explain how sorry she was. “The tweets in 2011 were so disgusting and so far from the person I am today. They were racist, they were fatphobic, they were homophobic,” she said.

“I am ashamed and disgusted in myself. There is not one person on this planet that hates me more than I do right now. And the pain I know I have caused so many of you eats me up. To know that I was someone you considered a great friend, this image of me is now tainted by someone who I don’t even recognise myself to have ever been.”

She lost over a 100k followers, before taking around six months off YouTube. She has since come back rebranded with her marital name, Elle Swift.

Molly-Mae Hague

How could we ever forget *that* now infamous podcast with Molly-Mae, where she told us all we had the same 24-hours in a day. People called out her “tone-deaf” comments, where she said to make money people just need to work harder, completely ignoring social inequality.

Speaking on The Diary Of A CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett, Molly-Mae said we all have “the same 24 hours in the day”, and “if you want something enough, you can achieve it”. “You’re given one life and it’s down to you what you do with it. You can literally go in any direction. When I’ve spoken about that in the past I have been slammed a little bit, with people saying ‘it’s easy for you to say that because you’ve not grown up in poverty, so for you to sit there and say we all have the same 24 hours in a day is not correct.’ But, technically, what I’m saying is correct. We do,” she said.

Following the interview, Molly-Mae lost over 40k followers on Instagram. Yikes.

Murad Merali

In August, podcast host Murad Merali had allegations made against him, and old videos resurface, that appeared to show him engaging in extreme fetish content centred around feet and “raceplay”.

The allegations alleged Murad was behind deactivated accounts with the handle “arabmasterboy”. On these, there were pictures and videos posted of extreme foot fetish content and raceplay where Murad allegedly called people of other races slurs such as a derogatory term for a Chinese person and used of the N-word and “monkeys”.

He addressed the situation, and posted a YouTube video where he said that whilst some of the video footage was of him, the captions were not written by him. “First and foremost the written content is not me, the severely derogatory comments are not written by me and I will stand by that – this is not who I am,” he said. “Some of this content is also not me and I can profusely apologise, I take full accountability for how this has come across and how everybody has felt from this content. Some of this content is me, not now, not recently, in the last five to six years, not any moment now.”

He continued: “These screenshots associated with these pictures, this vile racist verbiage that has been used is not written by me. This is not done by me in any capacity and this needs to be made abundantly clear with full force immediately.”

Anastasia Kingsnorth

Most definitely in the worst of taste, YouTuber and influencer Anastasia Kingsnorth thought it would be a good idea to take Asda’s new value range of foods and try and only eat that for a day. People completely dragged how she made living on a budget feel like a “Bushtucker trial”.

She spent £16.38 on a huge shopping list, and rightly so people criticised her for making content out of a range many are forced to rely on during the cost of living crisis. “This is people’s reality,” one person tweeted. “That’s highly insensitive content in this climate.”

Lydia Millen

Lydia Millen has been at the centre of the latest out of the influencer scandals of 2022, when she posted saying she was checking into The Savoy hotel, because her heating had broken. Not like we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and it’s just ever so slightly out of touch to so breezily say you’re able to do this, when so many others can’t.

In her TikTok about checking into The Savoy, she said: “The heating is currently broken in my house so I’m heading down to London. I’m checking into The Savoy and I’m going to make full use of their wonderful hot water, so let’s get ready for the day.” She then proceeded to get dressed, listing an outfit that cost over £30k.

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