A college student says she tried to compliment an influencer she’d followed for a long time — and walked away feeling like she’d just been told she wasn’t attractive enough to matter.
Watch the original video: @caralinecatlett on TikTok
What she says happened
Posting under the handle @caralinecatlett, California college student Caraline Catlett says she ran into an influencer she’d followed for a long time shortly after moving to the state in September. She told the woman she was a fan and asked for advice on growing her own following — and says the influencer replied that people follow her because she’s attractive.
Catlett says she then asked for a photo together, and the influencer told her it couldn’t be posted without payment, because she didn’t want people “capitalizing” off her face.
How she responded
Catlett posted a video the next day saying she hadn’t stopped thinking about the exchange. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said, pushing back on the idea that a following makes someone untouchable. “You have a couple hundred thousand followers on TikTok, you are not a celebrity,” she added, calling the entitlement “something that needs to be talked about.”
What the comment section made of it
The video has drawn nearly 4 million views and more than 800,000 likes, with over 9,000 comments. Creators Haley Baylee, who has 17.7 million followers, and Emilie Kiser, who has 5 million, both publicly backed Catlett — Baylee called the behavior “weird” and invited her to collaborate.
Why this struck a nerve
Catlett has chosen not to name the influencer and says she won’t in the future — this is her account of the encounter, not an independently confirmed one. What resonated wasn’t who the other woman was; it’s a familiar feeling, mattering less to someone than you thought you did, dressed up as a policy about photos.
Catlett’s own following has grown past 196,000 since the video — more than the “couple hundred thousand” she says the other woman has, proof, to her commenters at least, that the math already changed.