Reality star and model Kylie Jenner enjoys flaunting her accomplishments and there is no doubt that she has achieved success. However, some of her successes are not what they seemed. For example, her billionaire status. The beauty mogul was eager to show off that she became the youngest self-made billionaire but the truth was far from that. Fans are now checking out Kylie’s comment section of her heavily followed Instagram account and wondering if something is off there as well.
Among the Kardashian-Jenner siblings, she is the youngest and was thought to be the most successful. She was just 10 years old when Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiered and Kylie practically grew up on reality TV. When Kylie became an adult, she had a large following of fans who have observed her for years and she leveraged that fan base into a career.
Kylie launched her lip kits which are a combination of her love for cosmetics, her reputation for experimenting with new looks and her massive social media following. The lip kits sold out almost immediately and she was able to roll that popularity into a thriving cosmetics line. Last year, Kylie was named youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes.
She was proof that the new economy built on influencer status could disrupt older notions of wealth. Kylie had 190 million followers at the time of writing and this following gave her a reach that can rival with more traditional advertising venues and all from the comfort of her own selfie-snapping phone.
The fleeting spot at the top was soon called into question. People said that the reason why she is a “self-made” billionaire was because each of her parents was multi-millionaires on their own. Although Kris Jenner, Kylie’s momager said that Kylie used her own money to fund her cosmetics collection, fans dismissed the idea that one could separate the money Kylie earned for her appearances from the fact that she got catapulted into fame as a child because of her family.
Kylie’s ‘self-made billionaire’ status appeared to have been faked from the beginning. In May 2020, Forbes officially stripped Kylie of her title and claimed that both Kris and Kylie had overinflated the value of Kylie Cosmetics to make it look more successful than it is. The publication also accused Kris Jenner of forging tax documents to further the scheme.
Besides Kylie’s financial status, fans are also suspicious of the model’s Instagram account. While the nearly 200 million accounts following Kylie on Instagram are actual people, fans are wondering how many of them are bots. In a Reddit thread, netizens talked about the eerie similarity between many of the comments left on Kylie’s posts.
On Kylie’s birthday post, there were the same odd phrases like ‘the most selfless’ and ‘I need everyone to know.’ A commenter came in with a quick theory: “they are bots.” If it is true that her followers have several fake accounts it is not easy to find out if Kylie is actively seeking them out of simply dealing with the reality of being famous online. In 2019, a search found that almost half of her sister Kim Kardashian’s followers were fake accounts.
There was no evidence of where the bot accounts came from in the first place. It is also not certain if Kylie’s followers are bots or real people. /TISG