Aimeé
It’s an influencer’s job to look amazing all the time, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they’ve figured out a way to make the most out of a mirror selfie. The way they do it is still shocking people. Like everything else about influencer culture, mirror selfies are totally fake!
It’s not entirely clear when this started to become widely known, but it may have started when influencer Kara Del Toro shared how she gets so many incredible shots of herself “in the mirror.”
She posted a TikTok explaining that one of the big influencer secrets is that none of them are using mirrors. That’s why there are no smudges, no warping, and perfect lighting in mirror selfies. An influencer will set up on camera on a stand, position it perfectly, and then use a second camera as a prop.
She even showed her own set up:
And the result:
Looks great, just like she promised.
That was in early February, but someone recently posted on Reddit in r/Instagramreality about the same phenomenon and so many folks were shocked by the discovery that it caught the attention of Twitter user @nrlachance, who screenshot the post and shared it with their followers:
For some reason, people are having a really hard time grasping that this is what influencers are doing.
I find that really interesting because if you’d ever tried to take a super flattering photo in the mirror, you know bathroom lighting is terrible. And your hand usually looks like an oven mitt. And that you seem much further away in the mirror than you want to. It’s terrible! Of course, the people committed to looking hot would figure out a workaround.
There are actually more tutorials posted in the comments, in case Del Toro’s isn’t clear enough:
The only question for me is, now that you know they’re fake, do the pictures feel less aspirational?
