Bad Influencer is about the fragile architecture of aspiration in a world where everyone is hustling for visibility, stability, or escape.
By Joseph Jonathan
There is a particular kind of hunger that thrives in cities like Johannesburg — a hunger sharpened not only by poverty, but by proximity. Proximity to people who have made it. Proximity to the fantasy of a life curated through screens. Proximity to soft lives that seem to sit just one decision away.
Scroll long enough on Instagram, and you will meet entire economies built on longing: celebrity giveaways, young women selling the idea of aspiration, young men hawking shortcuts to wealth, and followers who sometimes can’t tell whether they are watching performance, survival, or both. In Bad Influencer, the South African Netflix series co-directed by Keitumetse Qhali and Ari Kruger, that hunger becomes a character of its own: restless, insistent, and willing to seduce anyone tired of waiting for their turn.
The story anchors itself in BK, played with disarming restraint by Jo-Anne Reyneke — a single mother who is one rent notice away from collapse. BK is exhausted, drowning in debt, and raising Leo, her autistic son, in a world that offers tenderness only to those who can afford it.
Her life is stitched together through practical survival: sewing handbags, negotiating with unyielding school administrators, dodging loan sharks who don’t care about the excuses of motherhood. When the walls around her start closing in, desperation stops being something she resists; it becomes something she must navigate.
Enter Pinky (Cindy Mahlangu), the loud, glittery, slightly chaotic influencer whose world is made of ring lights, sponsored content, and an online community more real to her than the one outside her apartment door. Their meeting, almost absurd in its coincidence, becomes the pivot on which the entire series turns.
What begins as a quick scheme — replicate designer handbags, let Pinky’s digital clout move them, split the profits — spirals into an unmistakably South African heist narrative, one where counterfeit luxury becomes the gateway drug to organised crime.
The plot unspools with a propulsive intensity: a criminal syndicate closing in, a police captain (Thapelo Mokoena) investigating the very business his new love interest is entangled in, Pinky discovering the limits of curated perfection, and BK confronting the moral rot she tries so desperately to outrun.
Bad Influencer borrows the adrenaline of crime capers, but its beating heart is in the small, intentional choices; two women learning to trust each other, a mother learning to navigate her son’s needs, a young influencer discovering how fragile her digital persona really is.
What elevates Bad Influencer beyond its genre trappings is the cultural texture woven through it. Johannesburg is more than a backdrop; it is the ecosystem that makes the story believable. The bustle of malls where handbags are more statement than accessory, the shadow economies running parallel to legitimate business, the undercurrent of hustle culture, all of it feels distinctly, unapologetically South African. The series understands that Joburg exists in layers: the wealthy, the strivers, the desperate, and the predators who feed on all three.
At its core, Bad Influencer is a study of the economies that shape contemporary African urban life: the economy of aspiration, the economy of survival, the economy of visibility. For Africans, particularly African women, the digital world is both an escape and a trap.
The influencer culture the series satirises is not merely vanity; it is a reaction to structural inequities that force young women to monetise themselves in creative, sometimes dangerous ways. Pinky is not simply shallow; she is performing a version of femininity that the world rewards. BK is not merely desperate; she is living in a society where “doing the right thing” does not guarantee safety or dignity.
And this is where the show finds its sharpest commentary. Bad Influencer refuses to romanticise BK’s descent into crime. Nor does it condemn her with moral superiority. It interrogates the societal conditions — class violence, exploitative labour, digital capitalism, gendered vulnerability — that make crime feel like the shortest route to stability. It challenges the idea of the “good mother” trope by presenting one whose choices, good or bad, are shaped by a world that has already failed her.
Still, Bad Influencer is not without its excesses. Its pacing sometimes leans into the hyperactive rhythm of TikTok culture — a stylistic choice that works visually but occasionally sacrifices emotional depth. Subplots, like the “mean girls” influencer crew, feel more decorative than essential. And like many African Netflix dramas, the show rushes toward a season-finale crescendo with the energy of a production eager for renewal. Yet, even in its rough edges, Bad Influencer remains undeniably engaging, a messy but magnetic blend of crime thriller, social satire, and character study.
What grounds the chaos is the acting. Reyneke turns BK into a layered, living contradiction: careful yet reckless, empathetic yet ruthless, a woman whose moral compass bends under pressure but never snaps. Mahlangu’s Pinky is equally compelling, a loud burst of colour masking insecurities she refuses to name. Together, they form the most compelling duo South African television has offered in years: oil and water, logic and impulse, survival and spectacle. Their chemistry does not just drive the story; it gives it its emotional weight.
By the time Bad Influencer ends — with betrayal, bullets, and a speech dripping in satirical irony — the show has made its point: in a world that worships appearances, it takes very little for authenticity to become counterfeit.
The series holds up a mirror, not just to influencer culture, but to the societies that produce it. It invites us to ask what desperation looks like in the digital age, who gets punished for wanting more, and how easily moral lines dissolve when survival is at stake.
In the end, Bad Influencer is not just about crime or comedy or even social media. It is about the fragile architecture of aspiration in a world where everyone is hustling for visibility, stability, or escape. It is about the people who fall through the cracks, and the glowing, glittering illusions that promise to catch them. And perhaps, it is a reminder that in an age where everything can be curated, the most dangerous thing of all is the life you’re convinced you deserve.
Rating: 3/5
Joseph Jonathan is a historian who seeks to understand how film shapes our cultural identity as a people. He believes that history is more about the future than the past. When he’s not writing about film, you can catch him listening to music or discussing politics. He tweets @Chukwu2big.