Striking it big as an influencer might be an apt equivalent to winning the lottery. It instantly bestows fame, fortune and notoriety on an otherwise normal person. And much like actually winning the lottery, for 23-year-old TikTok influencer Ana Wolfermann, the luck has become an exhausting, endless curse. She’s hanging up her ring light, returning her free PR packages, and joining the rest of us on the morning commute—if she can get a job.
Wolfermann, who graduated from Notre Dame last year and currently boasts a TikTok following of 963,000, is no longer satisfied with what might be the most lucrative and laidback career a fresh college grad could hope to have. Indeed, the promise of full-time social media influencing has gripped young people in its talons: Nearly 60% of Gen Zers said they’d want to be influencers if given the chance, per a 2023 Morning Consult report. Three in 10 young respondents said they’d even pay to take part in the flash-in-the-pan lifestyle.
Not Wolfermann. She began amassing a following as a freshman, chronicling her outfits, her makeup looks while preparing for Fighting Irish tailgates, and nights out with her friends. Soon after graduating, Wolfermann realized just how lucrative the business proposition of influencing could be, and she eschewed a full-time corporate job in order to focus her time and attention on her brand—which is to say, herself.
The plan soon revealed itself to be more taxing than rewarding, and the constant self-awareness more crippling than empowering.
While Wolfermann does believe that some influencers may be able to do their job sustainably for the long haul, she nonetheless thinks a healthy balance is out of reach for most of her peers—unless a major shift in the entire ecosystem comes soon.
The following is a Q&A with Wolfermann, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Why are you quitting influencing?
I have a weird relationship with the fact that I’ve been taking time out of my day just to go on TikTok—and that that’s kind of productive because it’s industry research. At the end of the day, I’ve got to keep up with the trends.
When I was in college, a lot of the people I looked up to and ultimately wanted to follow in their footsteps career-wise are full-time influencers. So I was extremely eager to graduate into full-time influencing and continuing to grow.
But within six months, I started to have very real thoughts of “I don’t think…
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