Pity the poor Hague sisters: Molly-Mae – influencer, entrepreneur and former Love Island runner-up – and her fitness influencer elder sibling Zoe Rae.
Both have recently been subjected to ‘disastrous’ holidays, which they have bemoaned to their combined 2.1 million YouTube followers.
What went wrong? Food poisoning? Lost bags? Natural disaster?
Not quite.
Last week, Zoe Rae complained that she had to leave the tropical island paradise of Bali after just 48 hours because it ‘looks better on social media’ than it does in reality.
‘We came here with high expectations because we had seen on social media everyone was having such a lovely time,’ she announced on YouTube, misery etched across her shiny moisturised face. ‘Lovely places to eat and beaches and lovely gyms and coffee shops. But I don’t think the reality of Bali is shown much at all, and I do think it is down to a lot of influencers posting the more luxury side of things.’
Molly–Mae’s sister, fitness influencer Zoe Rae (pictured with husband Danny), 28, ditched Bali after 48 hours – apparently because the island didn’t live up to its Instagram image
In a separate YouTube video, Molly-Mae complained about her trip to the Isle of Man with her partner Tommy Fury
Watching it, you’d think she’d been shown a holiday brochure of Barbados only to have landed in Scunthorpe.
She ‘wasn’t going to sit down and say anything’, Zoe Rae went on to tell her followers bravely, ‘but people want to know’.
The truth is, there are so many parts of her statement that are genuinely hilarious. Firstly, that a woman who makes a living as an influencer – glorifying and photo-editing her own life – has been left aghast by other people who are doing exactly the same. Secondly, that she went on to flee a five-star hotel in Bali for another five-star hotel in Dubai – a city as fake as the veneers on the influencers who arrive there by the commercial flight-load.
Leaving Bali for Dubai is like walking out of Macbeth because you’d rather go to watch Fast And Furious 4. It’s like flying from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to the fake one in Las Vegas because it’s more modern.
Unsurprisingly, her privileged moans didn’t land well with fans – who pointed out that she was ‘out of touch’ and that Bali wasn’t meant to be a ‘luxury’ hotspot.
‘Molly-Mae’s video was so foolish I wonder if it was actually deliberate,’ writes Flora Gill
‘Leaving Bali for Dubai is like walking out of Macbeth because you’d rather go to watch Fast And Furious 4,’ says Flora Gill (Pictured: Zoe Rae with her husband Danny in Dubai)
But the backlash might, eventually, have dissipated had her sister not waded in with her own tale of holiday woe yesterday.
In a separate YouTube video, Molly-Mae complained about her trip to the Isle of Man with her partner Tommy Fury and their two-year-old daughter Bambi in an £86,000 camper van. She said it was blighted by delays and left her ‘having a breakdown’.
As a mum, I get it. A long, delayed journey with an over-tired and overstimulated toddler is every parent’s worst nightmare.
To a degree, I respect their decision to trudge through a rain-soaked British summer like the rest of us because – as Tommy told a podcast last month – they want their daughter to know the ‘meaning of normal’ aka ‘a nice camping holiday… not staying in five-star hotels’.
But it is an unfathomably stupid mistake to complain about your own holiday – in a motorhome worth more than some people’s flats – when the internet is still mocking your sister’s Indonesian travels. The videos are still trending, the memes are still flowing. Little wonder that critics have now piled in to call both sisters ‘entitled’ and ‘spoiled’.
Molly-Mae’s video was so foolish I wonder if it was actually deliberate: A calculated act of self-sacrifice to take some of the heat from her sister. In politics, there’s a move called the ‘dead cat strategy’ where you distract from a negative news story by saying or doing something striking – like throwing a dead cat on a table. Was Molly-Mae looking for a metaphorical feline carcass to take the hate away from her big sibling?
Molly-Mae and Tommy were said to be staying in an £86,000 camper van on the Isle of Man with their two-year-old daughter Bambi
Molly-Mae with daughter Bambi. The star has said their family holiday to the Isle of Wight was blighted by delays and left her ‘having a breakdown’
The difficulty the Hague sisters have is that – in building their online personality empires – they have got themselves into an impossible situation. They have branded themselves ‘relatable’: They want you to believe they’re just like you or me, albeit shinier, Photoshopped version with better hair.
From her early days as a YouTuber, what made Molly-Mae so popular was her authenticity and the honest way she’d share her life with her audience. But she’s become a victim of her own success and now lives a life far removed from her fans. If the Hagues’ holidays are really so terrible, then what does that make ours when our budgets probably wouldn’t even cover the cost of their bar snacks by the pool?
The Hague sisters are emblematic of a generation fuelled by social media, taught to over-share and encouraged to attach a narcissistic level of belief in the importance of their own lives and opinions. When every experience and inconvenience becomes fodder for ‘content’, it’s hard not to view life through a distorted filter. One where even an island paradise or a multi-thousand-pound camper van isn’t picture-perfect enough.
