It looks like this year's batch of Married At First Sight Australia (MAFS) brides and grooms will have to (queue up the dramatic sound effect) keep their day jobs because their Instagram followers haven't gone up enough to make them professional influencers.
But don't take our word for it.
One influencer manager told Yahoo Lifestyle that the 2023 cast doesn't have what it takes to make it big in the social media game.
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"These days you can’t quit your day job with anything less than 300,000 followers and even then they have to be super engaged," they explained to the outlet. "The market is more saturated than ever."
The road to fame isn't paved with gold or good intentions, but your Instagram follower count.
It has been a trend over the years that once a MAFS season was done, these overnight celebrities would go head-first into spruiking products on Instagram and being paid to go to clubs.
But this latest instalment must have not struck a chord with the Australian public because the brides and grooms haven't seen a huge jump in their online following.
Bride Claire Nomarhas saw the biggest increase on Instagram, with her follower count jumping from a measly 2,800 followers to a weighty 64,000.
Melinda Willis, who already called herself an influencer, saw an increase of 150,000 followers to 199,000.
Meanwhile Bride Evelyn Ellis now boasts 120,000 fans.
And here's the rest of them:
- Jesse Burford 56,400
- Bronte Schofield 50,200
- Tahnee Cook 39,800
- Lyndall Grace 38,600
- Duncan James 36,100
- Layton Mills 33,200
- Ollie Skelton 30,400
- Cam Woods 24,900
- Joshua White 24,100
- Harrison Boon 22,800
- Dan Hunjas 20,500
- Alyssa Barmonde 20,400
- Adam Seed 17,700
- Melissa Sheppard 15,700
- Tayla Winter 11,800
- Shannon Adams 10,900
- Rupert Bugden 10,800
- Hugo Armstrong 3,800
While some of these numbers might seem impressive to the average social media user, they're rather watered down when compared to last year's brides.
For example, Domenica Calarco and Ella Ding left the show with over 500,000 followers each.
As we can see from the numbers above, and by using the basic maths that Ed Sheeran taught us with his recent spate of albums, they're all far below the target of 300,000 as per the aforementioned influencer manager.
We'll see what happens as time goes on we guess.
The season just kicked off in the UK, so that could see a second wind for these reality TV contestants.
Participants tend to see an uptick in followers when they regain access to their accounts and can share their own content once again...and spill the tea from the show.
So, hopefully there are some spicy times ahead.
For our sake and their follower counts.
Topics: Married At First Sight, TV and Film, Celebrity, Australia, Social Media
Rachel Lang