“She doesn’t even go here!”

“She doesn’t even go here!”

If you’ve seen Mean Girls, you know the scene.

Except in 2026, it became weirdly relevant to an influencer who had just announced that she graduated from Duke.

Angel Victoria Murdock spent nearly two years documenting what looked like her life as a Duke PA student.

Scrubs. Studying. Clinical rotations. Graduation.

Except… she didn’t go there.

And it got me thinking about the difference between curating your life and fabricating one.

We all curate.

We post the cute relationship photo, not the argument about the three empty toilet rolls beside the bin.

We take 47 selfies and post the one that looks accidental.

Fine.

Inventing an entire Duke education is something else.

Seeing the reaction from Black women, I really feel for them. Angel presented herself as a Black woman succeeding in a field where Black women are underrepresented. She wasn’t just making herself look impressive. She was borrowing credibility from women who actually did the work.

Which made me ask:

Why do we feel the need to fake something to make ourselves more interesting?

Around 2020, ADHD suddenly became very popular online. I have ADHD, and yes, there are positives and negatives to it. But watching a disability turn into a quirky internet personality trait was… interesting.

And it wasn’t just ADHD.

There were influencers accused of pretending to have Tourette’s.

Tics and Roses was one of the biggest examples. I grew up with a friend who had Tourette’s, so watching that controversy was particularly strange for me.

But people inventing identities for attention is nothing new.

I remember watching The Woman Who Wasn’t There, about Tania Head.

She became one of the most prominent voices in the 9/11 survivor community.

Tiny problem.

She wasn’t there.

Then Belle Gibson built a platform around having cancer.

She didn’t have it.

Different stories. Same question:

Why do people feel they need to invent a more impressive life to be interesting?

Because influencer marketing runs on trust, and once that trust is broken, it is very hard to get back.

Followers are numbers.

Trust is the influence.

Curate your life. Pick the flattering photo. Move the laundry out of frame.

Fine.

But you do not need to invent an entire life to be interesting.