How Trisha Paytas Shows the Dark Side of Personal Branding & Social Media

Throughout my time at university, I have come to hate the idea of personal branding. I find the concept dehumanizing, unnecessarily restrictive, and entirely unrealistic. As the number of personal branding seminars my peers and I are forced to take rises, so to does the life become drained from my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Boring retweets of news articles and the occasional PG gif are the only remnants of a place where actual human beings with actual human thoughts once occupied. These seminars from ‘personal-branding coaches’ have left everyone terrified of using social media in a meaningful way; too scared to show even a glimmer of their political leanings, to take a stance on controversial topics, or even to be playful or marginally off-colour.

Employability > everything else.. I guess?

Traditional personal branding is exhausting. For me, the endeavour was impossible. I consider myself to be a jack-of-many-trades (and the master of none). The prospect of branding myself one particular way was incredibly daunting, and no matter how hard I tried to squeeze myself into a box, I always fell out of shape. I, like every other human in existence, was not born square-shaped. I stopped trying to wrestle myself to fit somewhere I clearly didn’t belong, and have since embraced what I was meant to be: misshapen, a bit PG-13, and entirely human.

I realize that I am an outlier in this, and that successful personal branding can lead to a lot of popularity, wealth, and open the doors for some really cool opportunities. But, we must ask ourselves: at what cost? Is denying our human nature and refusing to engage meaningfully with media worth the money, fame and (alleged) increased employability?

I’m not so sure it is.

My distaste for personal branding is likely what led to me to my discovery of Trisha Paytas: a controversial Youtuber with over one billion views, famous for eating copious amounts of food, having emotional breakdowns on her kitchen floor, and releasing questionable christian pop music (amongst other things)

I was initially attracted to Trisha Paytas and her content because it was so seemingly unpolished and authentic. At least amidst the sea of perfect ‘beauty gurus’, with their jump cuts, uplifting background music, and yankee candles burning in the background. To me, Paytas was the antitheses of a personal brand, and I loved every imperfect minute of it.

It seemed like a lot of other people loved it too, and the multi-talented, perpetually entertaining Paytas now boasts over 3.5 million Youtube subscribers, and 1.5 million Instagram followers.

Along with being a social media mogul, Paytas has published two books, released a number of EP’s and singles, was featured in various music videos, and is a reality TV star; known for My Strange Addiction, Ellen, The Tyra Show, America’s Got Talent, and, most notably, Celebrity Big Brother UK.

Her start on Youtube was pretty normal, she uploaded a nice medley of vlogs, sit-down-chat videos, with a couple of trolling videos thrown in for good measure:

I think people gravitated to Trisha for the same reasons as myself; her unrefined and unapologetic nature was refreshing in an otherwise artificial, people-pleasing environment.

Yet, after nearly a decade of watching Patyas, her content began to change. Sit-down chat videos became replaced by emotional meltdowns on the floor or eating shows.A homogenous personality, theme and mood began to emerge in each upload. There was an air of intentionality in every post, and I realized that not having a traditional personal brand, was Trisha’s version of a personal brand. Her ‘raw’ kitchen floor breakdowns were a cash cow, and her emotion-fuelled binges were likely carefully crafted to rake in impressions. Trisha undoubtedly knows she fills a gap in the market, and exploits her role as the internet’s raunchy, relatable content creator to the furthest extent.

This is not all to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with playing the social media game like this, at the end of the day Trisha’s content (like most reality TV) is entertainment, and viewers should probably expect to have to suspend their disbelief a little bit. I don’t want to paint Paytas as a manipulative master-mind. While I don’t doubt her intelligence, I think her brand of ‘comical’ excessiveness and emotional instability formed organically, and perhaps initially, without any real intention. What happened to Trisha inevitably happens to a lot of edgy content-creators: the pursuit of views leads to an inescapable (and sometimes dangerous) niche.

As for Trisha’s niche, it turns out, Paytas’ fans really like to see her go through emotional turmoil, add to her hoard of clothing, fail at diets, and eat a lot of fast food. Driven by success, Paytas appeases her fans desires, and now almost exclusively uploads eating shows, massive clothing hauls, or (sometimes contrived) kitchen floor meltdowns. As an avid fan of Trisha this behaviour, and the immediate reinforcement it receives, is worrisome. In her earlier years on Youtube, Trisha discussed in-depth her struggles with binge eating disorder, with her shopping addiction, mood disorders, and her history of turbulent and volatile relationships. She documented countless attempts at overcoming her mental illnesses, never to any avail. Videos showcasing her pitfalls received nearly double the attention than those focused on her betterment — and people quickly grabbed onto the ‘relatable meme-queen’; failing to see the struggling human-being behind the personal brand. Her serious mental illnesses have become so ingrained with her perceived persona, that fans (and maybe even Trisha herself) can no longer distinguish between disease and quirk. Trisha memes are littered throughout each corner of the internet, our blindness to, or unwillingness to recognize the dangers of Trisha’s content have led fans to incessantly make a mockery out of the life-threatening diseases she has claimed to grapple with. As fans of Trisha, we have effectively made her dangerous vices profitable, and given her the ultimatum of vitality or views.

Despite their inherently fluid and moldable nature, personal brands can feel very permanent and limiting. When the foundation for one’s personal brand is a string of mental illnesses, the practice can quickly become deadly. Personal brands likely feel even more concrete as a large scale content creator, as any changes to the way you portray yourself will likewise alter the relationship between you and your audiences; directly affecting your livelihood and widely -analyzed public image.

We often talk about social media and mental health, particularly in regards to its ability to deteriorate feelings of self-worth, increase anxiety, and worsen depression. We rarely consider the physical and mental dangers that can come with striving to meet fan expectations, pursuing virality, or even just maintaining a contrived public image. Trisha is not the only internet star to sacrifice her wellbeing or simply go too far for the sake of views. Some other recent cases of content creators prioritizing impressions above all else include the Youtuber who got shot by his pregnant girlfriend during a video stunt, the hundreds of internet users who filmed themselves eating tide pods, and of course, Logan Paul, who exploited a suicide victim for an eye-catching thumbnail. The phenomena of people endangering themselves or others, whether physically or mentally, for the sake of internet fame will only become more exasperated with rising levels of content saturation. As both content creators and consumers we have a collective responsibility to not create, share, or glorify content demonstrating harmful behaviours (even if you think it would make a really funny meme, or iPhone case).

The bottom line is this: no amount of views, digital popularity, or prospective employers will ever matter more than your mental wellbeing.

“The truth is that we don’t need everyone to like us; we need a few people to love us. Because what’s better than being roundly liked is being fully known — an impossibility both professionally and personally if you’re so busy being likeable that you forget to be yourself. “ — Jessica Valenti

It so incredibly easy to lose sight of our authentic selfs when we craft our digital identities in the image of what we think will be likeable or well perceived. If we can learn anything from bubbly, talented Trisha and her convergence of personal branding and mental illness it’s probably to stop taking personal brands so seriously. We are humans not corporations, we were designed to grow and change and flip and flop. We don’t have to worry about limiting ourselves to one direction, profession or aesthetic. Like Trisha has shown, we can quickly trap ourselves into dangerous or unnatural places when we focus too much on carving out a box to fit our human form.