The Internet Lately: Polyamory, Echo Chambers, Judgment Culture, & What It Means to be an Influencer in 2025

SO MANY THOUGHTS, so much to say!

Hiiii guys. What’s up? Happy Tuesday. I know I’ve been a little quieter lately and that’s because I have so many thoughts on everything going on online (and IRL) right now that I barely know how to formulate them into words. But we’re going to try. Because I am a words person after all, that’s what I do.

(Btw, my new merch dropped TODAY & I am so so excited about it!! Our new IT’S NOT ME, its my signs astro tee & our 777 LUCK tee in two colors are now live! Shop while it lasts, this will go v quickly!)

Now… into today’s topic. There’s a lot. Stream of consciousness. Let’s go.

The internet has been wild lately. Some of the topics we’re going to dive into today are really heavy and I feel require a certain amount of privacy & respect for the people involved, so I want to begin by saying I don’t consider this piece to be ~content~ per say, but more of an online diary about all the things I’m seeing in the space right now. I say that because, I think it’s really icky and awful that so many people are creating “content” around something that happened so tragically to a popular TikTok mom influencer (which we will discuss a bit here), and it’s gotten me thinking about so many things… especially as an influencer myself.

So this is not content, but rather a look into my brain. :)

A look into the mind of someone who has been influencing professionally for nearly 13 years, but also wayyyy before that because I was a staple in the AOL chatrooms when I was 9 years old. 9!!! I literally went in there every single day after school (after booting up my computer and shouting out to my parents, “I’m turning the computer on!! Okay?!?!?”) and gave advice to strangers online constantly, starting in 4th grade. And I have watched the internet change so dramatically over these last decades. But especially this most recent decade.

Which brings us to now—2025. The landscape has chaaaanged baby, it’s wild.

Last week was particularly loud on social media. Between Aubrey Marcus’s podcast episode declaring his choice to be polyamorous with his wife and their lover, the beyond tragic death of a very popular TikTok influencer’s son, the continued Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni drama, the return of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (I am a fan, don’t get me wrong!) to TV, all things MAHA & politics, and so much more—scrolling social media has literally become entering the loud AF court of public opinion, rather than scrolling to find good vibes and inspiration.

Beyond that, there’s the trends. The never-ending echo chamber of trend after trend after trend on Reels & TikTok that, yes, are fun (I partake in them, I am not above it), but they’re also kind of soul-sucking all of our creativity away from us without us even realizing it. The thing is, it makes sense that we’re all participating in the trends—that’s how we grow on social media now, and especially as influencers we don’t only want to grow, we need to grow… our livelihood depends on it! Plus, the trends are cute and it’s easy to put some text on a screen that feels true to you, and reach people will it.

So, contrary to a lot of other spiritual teachers online, I’m not against the trends. But I feel like we really need to examine why we’re doing them… are we doing them because we want to grow? Are we doing them because we want to be like everybody else? Are we doing them because we feel exhausted by the endless loop of scrolling forever and we don’t want to have to think too hard, so we’d rather follow a trend than create one or post outside of the norm? Should we be using our creativity more instead and try to shift the norm to something far more interesting and unique to us?

And then the trends themselves have gotten a little whack. For instance, there was a trend all of last week about “Propaganda I’m Not Falling For” & then underneath it you put things that you don’t agree with, or contrary—some people were doing the opposite, like “Propaganda I Am Falling For.” I even did one, and it’s here!! I like mine because it feels true to me and I had a fun time making it. But there are some things I don’t like.

Here’s what I don’t like… I stumbled into a rabbit hole on TikTok where I saw a bunch of people doing the trend but making it mean. I saw people calling out actual influencers/celebrities as the “propaganda they’re not falling for,” a.k.a just an excuse to post about not liking someone!! I saw people write that “they’re not falling for” Mel Robbins, Gabby Bernstein, Melissa Wood, some of my fellow Dear Media hosts, so many people I know and love. I am purposely not naming the names of others because I don’t want to further feed into the negativity.

And then I saw the comments—OMG, the comments. It was like a pile-on of thousands of people who felt the same way, similarly ripping those people apart and being like, “FINALLY, someone said it!!!! XYZ SUCKS!”

Yada yada, blah blah blah.

This may sound super naive of me to think that the internet isn’t like this or hasn’t been this way for a long time, but I don’t mean to say that I didn’t know this wasn’t a thing. I just thought the negativity was hidden away on underground sites or harder places to find, not in plain sight on regular old TikTok or Instagram. I thought that if you didn’t want to see it (which I don’t), you could easily avoid it by, you know, staying FAR away from places like Reddit. So it made me feel icky and weird inside when I stumbled upon it plain as day, without even looking for it.

And then there’s the polyamory of it all! Now this is niche, so sorry if you guys have no idea what I’m talking about. The brief breakdown is—Aubrey Marcus is a super successful podcaster in the spiritual space, and he has been married to his wife Vylana for about five years. Two ish years ago, they quietly added a third woman to their relationship, named Alana. About a week and a half ago, Aubrey released a podcast episode titled, “A New Pattern of Sacred Relationship Emerges,” which is a 2.5 hour deep dive on their polyamorous relationship and how it came to be, complete with moderation & commentary from their spiritual teacher Dr. Gafni.

I listened to the whole podcast, which was a little out of left field because I very rarely tune into his podcast and I wasn’t particularly interested in this topic… but people were going crazy about it online, so I wanted to hear what they had to say. I walked away from it feeling a lot of feelings—similar to what much of the internet had felt, but also very different than a lot of the angry outrage I was seeing so many people spewing about it. The reason I’m even writing about it here, is because it fits perfectly into today’s topic of ‘WTF has happened to internet culture?’ (& what are we going to do about it?!)

Here’s the thing about my take on their polyamory situation: they’re all consenting adults, and I think people should be able to do whatever the heck they want, whatever feels good and true to them, as long as it’s not hurting anyone. I walked away from the episode feeling personally like I would never want to be in a situation like that one, and also feeling a bit like it painted ayahuasca (the beautiful grandmother medicine I revere so, so highly) in a poor light because it really made plant medicine look like part of the culprit for this ‘awakening’ toward having multiple sexual partners. But it was more about his reaction to the plant medicine than the medicine itself, if you ask me.

I also felt really heavy in my heart for both of the women in the situation, particularly Vylana, because although they’ve all chosen to be in that situation (which I can respect and even admire about them), it also felt like it was a hard life path all the way around, which I don’t love because I am a big advocate that romantic relationships can & should be easy, and that you should always feel chosen and adored and like your lover’s one and only—I think it’s probably best for the human psyche, in general. And I felt a lot of sadness coming from the women when I listened, even if it was undertones of it and more subconscious.

HOWEVER… I also feel that my distaste for the whole thing could be my own projection (everything is our own projection at the end of the day), which brings me back to my original take on the situation: that they’re consenting adults and they can/should do whatever they please. When it comes to Aubrey, I feel I’ve seen the archetype of this kind of man many times, especially because I’ve spent a lot of time in the plant medicine spaces. I’ve seen many, many men ‘awaken’ to love being more of a universal thing than a monogamous thing, and I’ve seen many of those men become completely unhinged and plow through (and subsequently ruin) every good thing in their life in search of something ‘more.’ (& btw, I’ll be happy if I never hear the word ‘eros’ again after this ep—IYKYK.)

I don’t love it and I don’t agree with it in the sense of I would never want to be a part of such a relationship… but at the same time, I have a respect for it because I truly respect people who do what they feel is right for them and bring loving and mindful intention into it. As long as no one is getting hurt. And since they’re all currently choosing to be a part of it, the love outweighs the hurt for them it seems. But I do have a bit of a prediction that it’s not going to work for all three of them (especially the women) longterm, and that’s something they will have to reconcile with.

I have MANY more thoughts on that, but I will share them on a different day if you guys want to hear. Because the main thing I wanted to get into about this is… the internet went f*cking ape shit over this polyamory podcast. And all of us spiritual people / spiritual teachers online were getting grilled by our audiences at large about our take on it, because it started to seem as if you weren’t denouncing it or having a loud opinion about it, there was something inherently wrong with you for ‘staying silent.’ Lol.

I saw many, many people getting truly unhinged over the episode—people I love and respect and know. Because this type of thing triggers a deep wound for many of us… particularly the wound of the culty, ego-centric man in power who cannot be or does not want to be faithful to his wife. I saw spiritual teachers posting things talking about how insaaaannnee they all are, how the women are brainwashed, etc. etc. And even if that WERE true, I don’t really think it’s our place to say. Because by saying that, we’re just feeding into the judgment and the assumption that we KNOW them and the inner workings of their mind, when we really don’t.

So the bullying and spiritual pile-on of it all became really hard for me to watch. Because there is nothing spiritual about bullying and judging people and ripping them to shreds. I know they chose to share this very vulnerable/intimate with the world so the criticism is coming from that place, but still. We as humans are so quick to judge, and to judge hard, and to think we have the righteousness within us to hold such a strong opinion over complete strangers & their lives to me is just WILLLDD.

So with that, we wish them all well & I’ll be curious to hear how the rest of their relationship unfolds—and if they’ll continue to share it publicly or start to be more private with it all after the online LASHING they’ve all received.

This brings me to our final topic for today, which is the tragic death of a beloved TikTok influencer’s son in a horrific drowning accident a few weeks back. I don’t even want to put their names in this article because I am not here to be yet another person commenting on their private situation, but it will be easy for you all to look up who I’m talking about if you so wish.

This story hit so unbelievably close to home for me… the fact that I have a 3 year old son, that we just moved into a house with a pool, that I know the feeling of being a mom of two under 3 and how much these kids are my absolute WORLD… literally all of it. It hits so close to home I couldn’t even breathe when I read the news. To be honest with you, I’m still struggling with it horrendously even though I know tragic things happen to families every day—this one just cut deeeeep.

The reason I’m including it here is because, again, like the polyamory pod, the internet has been ripping this poor family to shreds. And unlike the polyamory pod, this family hasn’t willingly spoken up about what has happened yet, so everything that has been shared in the court of public opinion is simply god awful and unnecessary, to be preying upon a family who is grieving.

On the one hand, I get the parasocial relationship of it all and how all of the mom’s fans are standing behind her and grieving with her—“when one mother cries, we all cry” is such a resoundingly true statement and I am one of those moms who is grieving with her from afar. She deserves ALL of the support and then some, whether she chooses to return to social media or not.

What I don’t get, and I will NEVER get, is the massive amounts of people online trying to blame these poor parents for what happened… without knowing them at all, without knowing the story itself, without having any compassion or wherewithal about the tragedy and what they themselves would do if they ever found themselves (god forbid) in the same situation. There are people creating content around this, berating them for not having a proper pool fence, even going so far as to say maybe they did it on purpose.

It’s so sickening, it actually made me take a step back from using social media all weekend. I posted a few things, but didn’t scroll at all. The internet’s reaction to a grieving family, and even the media’s reaction to it, was basically the final straw for me. And watching / seeing how the internet has evolved over the last many years, I really don’t think it would have been like this ten years ago. Not even five years ago.

It’s almost like, we as consumers of online content, have gotten to the point where we feel like we are *owed* something from the people we follow, and if we don’t get what we’re owed, we go crazy. Aubrey’s following wanted him to stay monogamous, the TikTok mother’s following wanted her to keep her family safe (of course she wanted that too), now her following wants an explanation or an update from her, the propaganda trend posters want to find solidarity with others who dislike the same creators as them—this all ranges from exhausting to unhinged.

At the same time, I feel that 95% of the internet is good. MOST people are inherently good. Most people are rooting on the people they follow and sending genuine love. It just so happens that the other 5% tends to be incredibly loud, so we end up hearing them the most sometimes.

And for people reading who are not influencers or content creators, there’s a saying among us that goes something like, “For every 100 positive comments you get, the 1 negative comment reads the loudest.” For some reason, that negativity just hits so much harder sometimes than the positivity, and it’s rough out there.

All of this makes me really ponder and reflect upon what it means to be an influencer in 2025, and how to continue doing it sustainably. I have been influencing for my whole adult life, and I have no plans of stopping. I hope I’m still doing it, and connecting with you guys, when I’m 80. And if that’s my goal, then I must figure out a way to continue to show up with proper boundaries that help me be immune to the noise. It’s all a lot sometimes, isn’t it?!

I know all of us positive, high vibrational, kind and creative souls will be the change that this industry needs in order to last. We need to come up with innovative and true ways to stay on social media without letting the darkness and depletion of it all creep up, from the judgment and the keyboard warriors and alllll the things.

Also, I chose to post this today because it seems to be a collective feeling. I’ve mentioned it a few times on social media lately and received so many replies from people who feel the exact same way. We are all mirroring this back to one another, and I know it’s an important conversation to open up. <3

WOULD LOVE your thoughts, please share below. Love you all so, so much. From my heart to yours. XO