Thousands of people are dying in the Russian-Ukrainian war. For one Instagram influencer, it’s all about her lost income due to Putin’s ban.
The war has come with its share of repercussions. One is Putin banning western social media in Russia. Moscow has opened a criminal case against Facebook owner Meta due to allowing such posts as ‘death to the Russian invaders’ to slip through after the war began.
As a result, a ban has been instituted, and 80 million users in Russia are being cut off from Instagram.
NEXTA, a media platform designed to share insight of Russian life under Putin’s rule shared a clip of a Russian beauty blogger having a meltdown over the ban.
“Do you think that for me, as an Instagram influencer, this is a source of income? To me, it’s just all life, it’s the soul. It’s the one with which I wake up, fall asleep, f**king five years in a row.”
Her video was posted on a day when the Ukrainian city of Mariupol entered its 13th day without food, water, and electricity. Civilian death counts rose to 1,582 over the past 12 days while looters were fighting over vital supplies and corpses were buried in the streets.
So, you can see why people responded with negative criticism due to the influencer’s insensitivity.
“She does not care at all about the thousands of dead people including compatriots. Obviously, her biggest worry right now is that she won’t be able to post pictures of food from restaurants,” one commenter said.
Her clip has been shared on Twitter and has racked up over 1.3 million views. It has also been retweeted by Britain’s health secretary, Sajid Javid.
Other influencers have also been posting their goodbyes on social media channels including Liza Lukasheva and Anna Ivanova, albeit with a bit more tact. They are urging their followers to stay in touch via other platforms such as Telegram and VKontakte.
Telegram is a multi-platform messaging app that allows users to text and send photos in videos in groups of up to 20,000 people.
It is unclear how long the ban will go on or how long the war will last. Hopefully, we can return to peaceful times very soon.
