The Life You Want? She Wants Out.

A hybrid PSA video.

It started with a scroll. A girl on screen, radiant and glowing, sipping iced coffee by the window. Her room? Spotless. Her skin? Perfect. Her life? Seemingly effortless.

Another girl watches from a cluttered dorm, cracked phone in hand, a half-eaten sandwich beside her. She doesn’t just admire that influencer and she envies her. The way she moves, smiles, sells. She wants that.

So she tries.

She buys skincare she can’t afford, lights she doesn’t need, and clothes that don’t feel like her. She mimics captions: “New haul 💕 #blessed.” She smiles until her cheeks ache. She sleeps surrounded by packaging, LED shadows flickering on the wall. She starts to gain followers. DMs come in: “You’re glowing!!” “Wish I was you 😭.” But in the dark, she knows she’s crumbling.

Because her life has become a set. Her room is a stage. Her phone, a mirror she fears. She’s exhausted. Not from creation—but from pretending.

Then one night, it breaks. A follower leaks a photo of her unfiltered, surrounded by mess. “She’s fake.”

“Unfollowed.”

The comments pile like the boxes around her.

And silence follows.

She walks outside for air. Downstairs, under harsh fluorescent light, she sees her idol. That influencer. No ring light, no iced coffee. Just a girl in sweats, hair tied up, staring into her own cracked phone. She.

Tired. Ordinary. Just like her.

This video reflects the themes we studied: performance, digital exhaustion, and the algorithmic demand for perfection. Our audience is the generation that grew up online, who crave attention but carry invisible scars from chasing it. I researched influencer burnout and the emotional cost of pretending.

This project reflects what we’ve explored in class: how media performances are rewarded by algorithms but paid for with exhaustion; how identity becomes performance; how illusions hurt both audience and creator. I researched the rising rates of influencer burnout, Gen Z comparison anxiety, and the mental toll of always being seen but never really known.

Our audience is anyone who scrolls, compares, and feels less-than. Anyone who’s ever wanted to be someone else through a screen. This isn’t a warning—it’s a reminder:

Even the girl you want to be… wishes she could just be herself again.