Singapore Influencer Allegedly Tries To Score Free Food Out Of Small Business Using Fake Followers

By Rachel Yohannan on 08 Jun 2020

Senior Digital Editor

Being an influencer is an enviable job. Free food, free beauty products, and paid endorsements - what’s not to love? At the same time, many of such online personalities have gained a less-than-stellar rep for asking for free items, not being on time with their deliverables, and using bots for engagement.

In the most recent social media spat, influencer An Affair With Food (AAWF) was called out by Venie Lin, co-founder of Frozendozen, for allegedly using fake followers to score free meals under the guise of helping small businesses.

Read on to find out more about the saga between Frozendozen’s Venie Lin and An Affair With Food!

Photo from Venie Lin

Frozendozen is a small local frozen food company that sells items like seafood, meat patties, and vegetables.

Venie shared her expose on Facebook on 6 June 2020, and it has since gone viral with over 1.1k shares and counting. The post is accompanied by multiple screenshots showing her exchange with AAWF.

Photo from Venie Lin

She starts off by showing the large disparity between AAWF’s follower count and actual engagement. Despite having 22.3k followers, AAWF’s posts seem to get a rather dismally low number of likes - which leads to the topic of fake bought followers.

Photo from Venie Lin

Venie says that she thought AAWF was a “legit” influencer and agreed to sponsor her with food as her older posts all had 200-300 likes. As AAWF did not want to sign a contract for the initially agreed amount of $300 worth of food, the terms of the collaboration were altered to $100 worth of food instead.

Photo from Venie Lin

It was only after that, that Venie realised that AAWF’s later posts averaged 50-60 likes. Venie acknowledges that she only did a background check after seeing the stream of posts with low reach.

She then keyed AAWF’s profile into Social Blade, a website that tracks social media statistics. What she found only sealed her impression on the alleged fake followers.

Photo from Venie Lin

Thanks to a previous expose by blogger Xiaxue, it has become widely known that if someone has a sudden spike in followers, there is a high chance that they have bought them.

Venie then requested for AAWF to refund Frozendozen for the $93.05 in food that was sent to them, stating, “According to management rules, all collaborations with influencers that have engaged fake followers or likes will be halt[ed] and a refund will be required on the items delivered.”

Photo from Venie Lin

According to Venie, AAWF was the one who approached them first asking for sponsorship, with the intention of helping small businesses during this difficult time of COVID-19.

Photo from Venie Lin

Initially, AAWF requested for a $300 fee to host a giveaway. However, as Frozendozen did not offer any payouts to previous giveaway hosts and needed to keep things fair for everyone, AAWF eventually agreed to do the giveaway for free.

It seems that AAWF’s photo likes had a sharp increase just shortly after liaising with Venie.

Photo from Venie Lin

In her Facebook post, the young business owner calls out AAWF for approaching “local local small businesses claiming to aid them in the name of COVID-19 when in fact reaping freebies with her fake likes/followers.”

Photo from Venie Lin

Apparently, Venie isn’t the only one who has had a not-so-pleasant experience dealing with AAWF. According to the message screenshots she posted, other small local businesses have also been approached by AAWF for freebies. One of them said that she requested for 6 products but only featured 2.

Venie is offering 1kg packs of free nuggets from Frozendozen to anyone who reshares her story about AAWF on Instagram.

Photo from Venie Lin