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Public Statistics Indicate Elena Taber's Social Media Following May Be Artificial

[Or a large majority of it is]

 

Elena Taber is known for being an influencer, yet one of the most common questions you will hear is who is she. It seems outside of a very small circle of people who do happen to follow her, she's not known anywhere. She certainly is not a household name to anyone. She isn't the face of any specific brand or product. In fact, in her entire ten years of this alleged career, she's done almost nothing noteworthy other than managing to get into a romantic situationship with Stranger Things's star Jamie Campbell Bower. This has drawn into question a lot of things. Namely, how did she become an influencer, or was she ever one in the first place? 

 

There is no denying that Elena did manage to gain some level of following years ago when she had a video go viral on YouTube. However, the reasons this video went viral were not for interest in Elena herself, but in the aspirational lifestyle she was living. The interest in this video had much more to do with the fact that she was living in a lavish beach house as a college student. Something that her parents had arranged and paid for, and had nothing to do with her own hard work or income she had independently generated.  [Source]

 

With any viral video, a person tends to gain some level of following. However, if the content of the video cannot be followed up with similar things, then the entertainment value of that channel usually dies down fairly quickly in favor of the next viral trend. This seems to be the case with Elena's beach video, as though she appeared to sustain attention after that, it began to dwindle. The only problem is that no one really knows just how much because public statistics heavily indicate Elena has been purchasing engagement for years. More than likely, even before her video went viral on YouTube. 

 

On metric websites such as Social Blade it is easy to see statistic charts dating back years, and there is something interesting that you can notice. 

 

[Source]

 

What you are seeing here is an example of what appears to be artificial engagement. When engagement is organic, you do not see sudden high peaks and drops. It is more like a gradual line up and down. These metrics here for her YouTube channel in 2023 heavily indicate that she purchased a large number of followers, lost 1,000, then purchased 3,000 more. This is not where it ends. either. This can be tracked across every single social media account she currently has. Here are some recent follower statistics from her Instagram account. 

 

[Source]

 

As you can see by the years listed, this was far before she became involved with Jamie Campbell Bower, and only continues to get worse if you track them closer and closer to her relationship with him. In fact, she suddenly jumped by tens of thousands of followers right around her Reddit Scandal, which doesn't seem to make any sense, as typically someone going through such a horrible controversy would either lose followers or stagnate, not gain 30-50 thousand new ones. There is also a very obvious mismatch with engagement on her posts compared to her followers. She is also known to get an insane amount of likes within minutes of posting "new" content, and I use the word new loosely, as she recycles content constantly. I can tell you that there is no way that she is getting 500-1000 likes within minutes of posting anything, especially not when she is only getting a handful of comments along with that. You will see this same issue on her TikTok account as well. All of which indicates artificially boosted content, not organic likes or views. 

 

 

The fact that these two videos from her TikTok account have almost the exact same number of views implies buying view counts from a third-party site more than it ever indicates she got them organically, as these numbers would never be this incredibly close together if she were getting real views. 

 

Another thing that people have noticed is that despite long surpassing 100 thousand followers on YouTube, Elena has never announced or shown off a silver play button plaque. Something that YouTube awards to any creator who organically manages to get 100 thousand subscribers. Though Elena does have an Instagram post talking about reaching 100K subscribers, she does not show a picture of the plaque. She does not mention the plaque. It has never been seen in the background of any of her YouTube videos either. This is extremely odd for a creator who allegedly has over 800K subscribers on YouTube. 

 

One other anomaly in this situation is the lack of PR boxes and brand trips. Elena is supposedly a travel and lifestyle influencer. She constantly talks about skincare, makeup, clothing, cameras, and trips that she takes. With her subscriber count on YouTube as well as the alleged number of followers she has on Instagram and TikTok, PR boxes, gifts, and brand trips are suspiciously absent. This is not to say she never gets a singular gift from a brand. This is not to say she does not get some perks or things comped sometimes. However, someone like her should be drowning in PR boxes to display and open. Elena is very much the type of creator who should (and would) be doing unboxing videos if she were getting PR boxes. Keep in mind, creators with far fewer followers and subscribers than her get these regularly, and yet not one is to be seen on Elena's end. Same with brand trips. Specifically, trips where a brand sends her somewhere, fully paid for, gifts her with tons of products, and sends her to a party or event sponsored by that brand. She has never done anything like that either. The closest we may have seen to this was when she was somehow invited to the Experdia Ambassador's summit over the past year. However, Expedia itself has never acknowledged her as an ambassador, shared her posts, or even approved her ad reel announcing that she allegedly works for them. 

 

You can also notice that a very large chunk of her alleged paid partnerships with brands (on Instagram) were never official. Something that you can see for yourself, as the brand never approved the ad. If these brands are not associating with her, following her, sharing her ad reels, or providing her with official links back to their products or services then they are not real paid sponsorships. It seems in a lot of these cases she is either faking them completely, exaggerating her relationship with them, using an affiliate link to claim a partnership, or being gifted something for free and pretending it is because she has a relationship with that brand. Furthermore, when she has had real confirmed deals with huge brand names like Calvin Klein, you will see that this only ever happened once and never again. This would indicate that the ad campaign that they paid her for did not perform as expected for her metrics, so they dropped her and never asked her to continue, which, once again, would point to her engagement being far more manufactured than organic. 

 

The claim being made here is not that Elena Taber's entire following is fake, but that her metrics are heavily inflated and have been for years. More than likely, since the beginning. It is a trend you can see dating all the way back to when she started her Instagram account in 2016. The like counts are always so much higher than the comments for content that is lackluster, vanilla, and boring. With no silver play button for her YouTube channel in existence, this means that YouTube recognized the artificial boosting of her account and did not send her one because she did not organically ever reach 100K subscribers, and if she ever did, it was far after she claimed to. It is a safe bet to say that the subscriber count you see on her account does not reflect the actual number of subscribers she has or has ever had. 

 

In my opinion, Elena has never been close to the influencer that she has portrayed herself to be. This appears to be a decade-long plot of buying engagement across platforms to appear successful and possibly open doors and connections for her. That is, until those brands she works with realize that her metrics are artificially inflated and drop her from their brands. It would also explain everything else that I have mentioned, such as no long-term brand deals, no high-profile brand deals, no PR trips, no PR boxes, and no silver play button from YouTube. Elena Taber's social media appears to fall much more under the level of influencer cosplay, fake it until you make it, or pretending to live a life that she does not actually live. Even with the most fame she ever did get (dating Jamie Campbell Bower), she was unable to make deeper connections or meaningful brand deals. With how brands vet creators these days, they would easily be able to see that Elena's numbers just don't add up. If she could get these luxury brands to notice or sponsor her, she'd have been able to do it far before getting with Jamie, but she couldn't even do it while dating him. Knowing this, it is easy to conclude that Elena Taber is likely no more than a fraud who has been very good at maintaining (and paying for) what appears to be consistent popularity where none organically exists.