influencers

MONTANA Brown has left her fans baffled AGAIN after she fumed over being unable to get her son an EpiPen – despite having no diagnosis for him.

The Love Island star, 31, often ruffles the feathers of fellow parents with her social media videos, and today was no different.

Speaking in her latest TikTok video, Montana began: “Guys, I’m about to have a rant, so beware.

“I went to the GP last week because basically Jude had this really random skin reaction, it was an allergic reaction, but we hadn’t actually given him any food.

“So I was like, This is weird,’ like his eyes were like swelling out of his head. I was like, He’s definitely allergic to something, but not sure what it is because we haven’t given him any food?

“So I went to the GP to basically say, ‘Look, I’ve got a nut allergy. You can see that on my records. I have anaphylaxis, so I’m worried that he’s now developed an allergy to something that I’m not quite sure what it is yet.

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“I’d like to get two kids’ EpiPens so that I can be prepared if he does have a worse reaction to whatever it is. Like in the meantime, like before we figure out, you know, get him allergy tested.”

Continuing her story, the reality star said: “Guess what they said? ‘No’.

“I was like, ‘Why? It’s just so painful.’ Like, I understand that there is a process to these things. But to me, I’m like, what am I going to do with an EpiPen apart from be safe with it?’

“Like, what are the dangers of me having an EpiPen? And I’m like, am I going to have to try and get an EpiPen off the deep dark web?

“Is that what this is coming to? I’m trying to safely protect my child in case he has an anaphylactic shock in my care to buy him enough time to get him to hospital. Like, is it me? Is it me?”

However, fans couldn’t believe what they were hearing, with one said: “They can’t just give you a medication without a diagnosis.”

A second shared: “Are you actually for real?”

A third added: “She’s is honestly on another planet!”

This isn’t the first time Montana has ruffled the feathers of fans.

The mum-of-two recently left her fans fuming after revealing the “privileged” reason why she didn’t plan to send her son to school.

And earlier this year a comment she made about food pouches in stores being “c***” for children left busy mothers who saw them as a convenient option feeling patronised.

The exterior of the two-story, beige-colored building looks like any other drab office space near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. But on a recent weekday afternoon, the inside was bustling with activity: hairstylists carried brightly colored wigs between soundstages, a prop artist was building a fake leg for an upcoming video and YouTube stars gathered in a lobby, fidgeting with their phones while they waited to film their next scene.

They were among more than 100 employees of Smosh Productions, which this spring moved into the 32,000-square-foot facility, from a much smaller location in the city, to accommodate their programming needs.

It’s the latest creator-run company deepening its roots in Burbank, a neighborhood long defined by such iconic studios as Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures.

Other influencer-led companies that have expanded production footprints in the city include Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow.

Internet content production is one of the few growth categories left in a Los Angeles production landscape that keeps shrinking.

“Being ‘Media City’ is a part of Burbank’s tagline. And it’s still true; we are just a different kind of media,” said Katelyn Hempstead, Smosh’s executive coordinator, on a tour of the new facility.

The company, owned by pioneering YouTubers Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, produces up to 10 hours of internet content weekly across five channels. Its programming ranges from sketch comedy to games and challenges for their fans.

Shoot days for digital productions rose 47% in the second quarter to 661 compared with the same period a year ago — even as the overall number of on-location shoot days dropped 13% during that period, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that tracks local filming.

“When people have an opportunity to work for a few days on a vertical series or [when] they make an income out of being an influencer and producing regular content for their various social channels, that does help the economy,” said Philip Sokoloski, a spokesman for FilmLA. “They still purchase things. They still utilize equipment. They may rent things from local supply houses.”

Cameras inside the “Who Meme’d It?” studio at Smosh Studios in Burbank.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Burbank has more than 1,000 media and entertainment companies that generate about 66,000 jobs.

Although the city does not give a breakdown of jobs by category, the creator economy has fueled some of the growth in the city’s entertainment employment over the last six years, said Patrick Prescott, Burbank’s community development director.

Most occupy flexible industrial space in the Airport district, leasing space for $1.65 to $2.81 a square foot, he said.

“It’s definitely a transitional period,” Prescott said. “There’s still something really valuable about sitting in a theater with a bunch of other people. But there’s also a lot of scrolling going on. Who’s generating that content? A lot of it’s generated here.”

Filmmakers work in the theater set at Dhar Mann Studios.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Due to anemic production activity, soundstages across L.A. have struggled to fill their studio spaces. That has opened up opportunities for new types of internet productions to fill at least some of the gap, said Sam Glendon, an industrial broker who’s handled several such deals. Creators building out their own space can pick up a discounted soundstage as a result, he said.

“There’s been this big supply-and-demand imbalance,” Glendon said. “It’s still a very niche type of clientele, but I’m certainly searching YouTube much more for who these people are and how many followers they have. Five years ago, I never did that.”

Controlling a studio matters to creators because it lets them move fast without a major studio’s bureaucracy, and platforms such as YouTube reward a steady, frequent posting cadence.

Alan Chikin Chow, behind the scripted YouTube high school drama series “Alan’s Universe,” moved his 13-person operation into a 10,000-square-foot Burbank facility in 2024 after outgrowing his Koreatown apartment.

“YouTube creators are the new trendsetters, and so we wanted to be associated with the big media in Burbank,” said Moris Zingman, the show’s lead producer. Proximity to the Warner Bros. lot helps land celebrity guests, too — Jacob Moncrief, Mythical’s studio president, said it’s an easy sell for shows like “Last Meals” when guests are already a few minutes away.

Filmmakers rehearse a scene in the restaurant set at Dhar Mann Studios.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Traditional media have taken note. Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow both struck deals with Netflix in July. “Good Mythical Morning,” “Mythical Kitchen,” “Last Meals” and “Alan’s Universe” are all set to stream there alongside their YouTube releases starting later this year.

Dhar Mann Studios, one of Burbank’s biggest creator-run operations, added a deal with Disney last week for 20 episodes of family-oriented programming — its second major-studio partnership after a 40-title vertical-video deal with Fox Entertainment earlier this year.

Mann, 42, started making YouTube content in 2018 under the Dhar Mann Studios banner, centered around morality and motivational videos. The company now runs a 125,000-square-foot, three-soundstage facility with roughly 220 employees producing rotating sets — restaurants, school hallways, a courtroom, jail visitation rooms — designed to mimic a small town.

But Dhar Mann Studios doesn’t own its Burbank building — it leases the space — and this month the company bought a 108,000-square-foot production campus in Chatsworth for $23 million, with plans to relocate there by 2027, the Real Deal reported.

It’s the same pattern playing out across L.A.’s creator economy.

“The scale that creators have gotten to is ginormous,” said Sean Atkins, Dhar Mann Studios’ chief executive. “Media companies are always looking at what the next thing is. The answer isn’t that they become us or we become them. It’s somewhere in the messy middle, of which nobody knows right now.”

Most internet content work is mostly non-union and typically pays less than traditional film and TV jobs. SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Editors Guild have started drafting new-media-specific contracts in response.

Even so, some workers welcome the opportunity.

Austin Scott, an editor who built a career cutting reality shows like “MasterChef” and “Dancing With the Stars,” recently landed his first big gig after three years of being unable to find post-production work, editing a YouTube series for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat. Over eight weeks, he’ll work 12-hour days for $3,500 a week — below the $5,000 to $6,000 a typical TV editing job pays.

“My expectations are that it’s going to be harder work, longer hours, more notes, less money,” Scott said. “But there’s no work, so people are kind of forced to take what they can get.”

A new influencer fad is ready to hit Instagram and TikTok by storm, three years after the croissant XXL by acclaimed French pastry chef Philippe Conticini won our hearts

If you were on social media in 2024, then you will know about the giant croissant.

The bloated continental breakfast item took the post-Covid world by storm, triggering food influencers to flock to Paris to film themselves marvelling at its impressive proportions.

Known as the croissant XXL, it was the doughy-brainchild of acclaimed French pastry chef Philippe Conticini. The 1kg whopper debuted in his Paris bakeries before making it across the Channel to Phillipe’s Islington cafe, inspiring other Instagram-savvy food creators along the way.

Christophe Michalak delivered the le big pain aux raisins (350g), Yannick Delpech dropped la chocolatine XXL and Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette tried big pain au chocolat (a relatively svelte 320g).

Type any of those names into the Instagram or TikTok search bars, and you’ll be inundated with photos of glamorous people attempting to cram the medium-dog-sized pastry into their mouths. Clearly, these videos are a hit. The first clip that comes up on Instagram is less than 10 seconds long and has 116,000 likes.

In social media terms, this is all very old news. The big croissant fad came and then, just as quickly, it went. But now there is a new big food trend on the scene. On a recent trip to Gothenburg, I visited the beautiful district of Haga, the city’s oldest neighbourhood. It’s a great place to explore, to wander down the pedestrianised cobbled streets packed with excellent homeware, furniture, book and clothing shops. And also Café Husaren. The cosy wood-paneled spot is the inventor of the massive ‘hagabullar’ cinnamon buns.

Stretching close to a foot from edge to edge, these enlarged treats are a significantly puffed-up, Instagram-friendly version of a good that is firmly baked into Swedish life.

The average Swede eats cakes and pastry equivalent to 316 cinnamon buns per year, according to the country’s tourist board, and the act of taking fika (a cake-and-food-focused period of time) is so important that two coffee breaks per day are an unwritten rule in many Swedish workplaces.

The hagabullen has been described as a “masterpiece and the epicentre of a luxurious fika”. One happy reviewer called them a “dream and very delicious, but only suitable for a person with great hunger.”

And this is the problem. The hagabullar are simply too big to be enjoyable. They contain too much stuff. While it is undeniably fun to buy novelty-sized things (foam fingers, big Chuppa Chups at airports, etc.), sometimes bigger is not always better. Particularly when it comes to food. The smaller something is, the stronger its ratio of surface area to innards is. The oversized croissants and hagabullar simply have too much inside and not enough outside to be tasty.

But then again, no one can tell that in an Instagram post. Nor can they see the waste that’s left over. The overly doughy croissants left to the pigeons; the belly-busting hagabullar that prove too much for an influencer to handle; the bin full of unfinished lattes bought so people can pose next to a pink wall in LA.

In fairness to Café Husaren, it’s not only an elegant place with an array of absolutely delicious baked goods, but it’s been selling the hagabullar for over 40 years. Far longer than the croissant XXL. Regardless, I was sad to see Swedes and tourists buying a hagabullar, snapping a pic and then discarding the majority of the sweet bun. Hagabullar sat, unloved, on several vacated tables close to mine.

Conticini’s XXL croissant is advertised as feeding eight people, but in reality, it is often nibbled by one or maybe two influencers, photographed, and then dumped.

They say that you eat with your eyes as much as with your stomach. While this is true, this kind of social media-friendly food is 90% for the eyes and far too little for the tum.

All of this is in service of an algorithm that rewards extremes, whether that be the biggest, the most extravagant (see Eating with Tod’s ‘tuna fight club video) or the grossest (see muckbang). It’s designed to shock in its extremity, which means it is ripe for ridicule.

Juliette Moreno is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef whose videos making fun of these trends have won her more than 400,000 Instagram followers. Her most recent efforts have seen Juliette create a huge Minion cookie, Monster energy drink soufflé, rat meringues, and hot dogs boiled in the dishwasher.

Her videos are funny because they take ideas that have been percolating on Instagram and TikTok to their most extreme possible end. She fills up the boot of a car with tiramisu so we don’t have to. Because we shouldn’t.

Around 645 million people didn’t have enough food to eat in 2025, according to the WHO, but the world produces food for two billion more people than currently exist. On a planet where Sudan and Gaza are currently facing famine, maybe we should give the big food videos a break for a while.