Mazzy doesn’t have an Instagram account but sometimes she will take my phone and look at my account. I’ve told her she can’t have Instagram until she is 13. Mazzy knows what I do for a living, but up until today, she never seemed to notice how many “likes” I had under my photos. I used to worry that once Mazzy started paying attention, she would attach too much importance to “likes” or wonder why some photos got more “likes” than others.

Welp, I shouldn’t have worried.

Today, Mazzy asked me how many followers I had. I told her. Her response: “that’s it?”

Then she asked how many likes I get. I gave her an average. She was unimpressed. “Like, what’s the most you’ve ever gotten?”

I told her that once I got 50k on something on @averageparentproblems.

“Do you mean 500k?”

No, I told her. 50k.

“Oh. Then how come you’re verified?”

Suddenly it dawned on me that my following is peanuts compared to her favorite tiktok stars. Whatever cool points I thought I had for being a so-called “influencer” were fading fast, now that Mazzy knew the clout and follower count that REAL influencers had.

“Listen, Mazzy. You don’t need to be Charli D’Amelio to be verified, okay? You can have a meaningful engaged audience without 36 million followers.“

Mazzy nodded and smiled like she felt sorry for me. “She has 66 million followers and goes up a million a day.”

OMG. WHAT IS HAPPENING. Nothing like being taken down 20 notches by your 10 year-old.

In summary, Charli D’Amelio is a teenager who eats a slice of cake and gets a zillion likes so WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING IN MY HOME OFFICE ALL DAY???