A Reddit forum dedicated to 'snarking' on influencers is home to over 100,000 members — some think the community has gone too far

• A subreddit dedicated to commenting on influencers' content and lives has over 100,000 members.
• Some r/Blogsnark members think the criticism is fair game as creators share their lives online.

A subreddit called Blogsnark begins its description with the words "swipe up," poking fun at a common phrase used by Instagrammers in their stories, which require users to swipe in order to access links to the products, posts, or brands they're promoting.

It goes on to say the forum is a space to "snark on your favorite bloggers, influencers, and everything else on the internet."

Blogsnark includes daily threads for general influencer discussion, which is where most of the conversations take place. There are also weekly threads for discussion of subpopulations, such as podcast hosts, parenting influencers, and foodie influencers. There are even monthly threads for discussing niche topics, such as financial influencers, homesteaders, and athletes' significant others.

More than 100,000 members follow the subreddit, which was created in 2015. Some admire how influencers decorate their homes, give back to their communities, and raise their children. But there's also a more negative side to the commentary, where members criticize influencer content, accusing them of oversharing their children's embarrassing moments, tastelessly flaunting their wealth, and publicly airing their relationship problems.

It's one of a number of online spaces that have cropped up in recent years to discuss the actions of influencers — like websites such as Tattle Life and forums such as GOMI (shorthand for "get off my internet") that allow users to discuss influencer drama.

Blogsnark, which has an average of over 650 comments per day and has more than doubled its members in the past two years, feeds into a tension within the content-creator ecosystem, where viewers often believe they have a right to comment on how influencers behave, and spaces to do so can foster their own communities. But the subjects of the discussions on Blogsnark are often heavily criticized and arguably even trolled, which leads to concerns that these spaces have gone too far.

Some users see Blogsnark as a valuable online community

In March 2020, Blogsnark gained so many members that it briefly climbed 300 spots higher on the list of most-subscribed-to subreddits, Reddit's statistics show. Dr. Sally Theran, a licensed clinical psychologist, suggested the uptick in interest in discussing influencers' lives might have been down to the pandemic. She said that with so many people isolated in their homes and missing traditional social opportunities, contact with people online replaced some of our natural social needs.

A 27-year-old group member called KC Feehan told Insider her favorite part of the group wasn't the influencer gossip but the off-topic threads that shared life updates, recipes, book recommendations, and other things.

"I came to Blogsnark for the dishy snark threads, but I've found a really great community," she said. "I really value the community of women there, who just happen to be brought together by our love of gossip."

Blogsnark member Maya Kravitz, 29, found another benefit. She told Insider she likes to use the forum to "keep herself in check" when it comes to being influenced by the people she sees online. "I'll see a million influencers all toting the same luxury items and want it. Then I see it discussed on Blogsnark and realize it's just the PR item du jour and I don't actually want it," she said.

Members defend their right to comment on influencers' lives, but there are concerns the criticism goes too far

Katie Denier, 22, has been participating in Blogsnark for about two years and said she mostly uses it to discuss Instagram posts the community perceives as controversial.

"I think when you have 800,000, 1 million, or 3 million followers, and you're putting everything you do throughout your day on your Instagram story, you don't get to say anything if people want to discuss what you've been up to," she said, arguing that if people didn't want their content publicly dissected, they could "do life without the validation of the audience."

Comments on Blogsnark express a similar sentiment. One, which received over 1,000 upvotes, said, "I wouldn't find influencers half as snark-worthy as people if they weren't streaming every minute of their day on Instagram stories."

Kravitz said she enjoys the lighthearted conversation on the forum, which she described as a "guilty pleasure — emphasis on 'guilty,'" but she added that some of the conversation "definitely goes too far." There have been times, she said, when she's been uncomfortable with how vicious the other commenters can be when criticizing influencers, especially for things such as parenting decisions. "I think sometimes we forget that we don't have the context of their whole lives, just what they've shown us online."

Another member, 34-year-old Lisa Denins, said that in the "three or four years" that she's been on the forum, she's noticed that the level of vitriol toward influencers has increased. She added that she believed the moderators deleted topical threads that regularly devolved into a conversation polluted by racism.

A Blogsnark moderator confirmed this to Insider, citing a now defunct weekly royals-related gossip hub. They said it was deleted for consistently violating too many subreddit rules.

For the influencers discussed, these types of forums can have a real effect

Most influencers rarely address the forum in public, and they swiftly delete any mention of it from their profiles, posts seen by Insider showed. But that doesn't mean they're not aware of or affected by their existence.

In February 2020, the lifestyle and motherhood Instagrammer Shannon Bird, who has 92,000 followers, posted about calling 911 when she was in need of baby formula in the middle of the night, as reported by KSL News at the time.

On Blogsnark, a thread was created to discuss the incident, and it racked up almost 500 comments that said she "loves the attention" and accused her husband of being a jerk. In a series of Instagram stories, which are no longer available to view but were seen by Insider at the time, she referenced Blogsnark directly, saying the comments were exacerbating the stress she felt surrounding the event.

One influencer who runs a financial-literacy account with 75,000 followers has frequently been the source of one of the niche topic threads in Blogsnark. She requested to remain anonymous because of fear of further backlash, but she told Insider that her interaction with the forum was "one of the most bizarre parts of being so online."

Last year, her husband, who isn't involved in her social-media presence, was contacted by a follower over his LinkedIn page, she said. The person said they were concerned that she was suffering from undiagnosed postpartum depression. She believes this was someone who frequented Blogsnark, as speculation about her mental health had been a popular topic of discussion there at the time. Although she couldn't directly link the culprit to Blogsnark, she believed that the hive mind there emboldened someone to reach out to her husband.

She said she perceived this as a "massive overstep," and her husband was concerned about their privacy, which led her to temporarily abandon the internet. "He wanted me to shut down my account, so I stepped away for a while. I let myself recalibrate. But ultimately I feel the work I do provides enough good that it's a net positive."

She said she used to keep up with the threads about her on Blogsnark, but that it was taking a toll on her mental health, so she now tries not to expose herself to others' opinions.

"I started an Instagram account to share knowledge on a subject that's changed my life for the better," she said. "I thought I was doing a good thing by sharing that knowledge with others."

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.