Originally posted onApril 9, 2025 @ 1:30 pm
Bad Influence The Dark Side of Kidfluencing Recap for #momager
-The first episode of Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing is titled #momager and talks about several kid influencers whose lives have been destroyed by having their lives go viral at the hands of their parents.
-The children in this episode were on a YouTube show called The Squad. Tiffany, the mother of Piper Rockelle was the one in charge of all of this and would soon be accused of not only exploiting these kids, but also ruining their lives and robbing them of their influence.
-A woman named Patience Rock Smith recalls Tiffany raising Piper as a single mom and how she would put Piper in pageants due to her outgoing personality and to show Piper’s dad that she was worth something.
-Patience says Piper was in the makeup, bikinis and dresses and that Tiffany always wanted her to be the very best.
-Piper would go on to do videos and music online via Musical.ly’s app. While you needed to be thirteen to be a part of it, several people would skirt the rules and post younger kids performing.
-Apps like this would lead to YouTube videos with children becoming popular and many of them, including Piper, becoming famous. Tiffany saw this as a good opportunity for Piper to show off her talents and become famous.
-Piper would get cast on Dance Twins with Tiffany. People would see for the first time how much Tiffany would push Piper to become famous…even putting her education second to becoming famous and performing. Patience was not happy with this, but tried to be supportive.
-Steevy Areeco talks about how her daughter Corrine was asked to be a backup dancer for Piper. Corrine thought this sounded cool and wanted to take the opportunity, since she, too, wanted to break into the business.
-Corrine loved the audition and became fast friends with Piper, while Steevy became friends with Tiffany. They all agreed to make videos on YouTube in hopes of taking their love of dance to the next level.
-The videos would be small things at first of the girls playing and hanging out. They went viral quickly and they would soon become popular on social media, leading to Piper and Tiffany moving to LA in 2017.
-Piper would soon film with Hunter Hill, who would pose as her older brother. Another influencer named Raegan Beast talks about the experience and how Hunter would joke about being with Tiffany sometimes.
-Raegan described Hunter as an older brother type. However, he found this situation very weird and wondered what Piper knew about Hunter and Tiffany’s relationship.
-Piper was soon very popular online and soon landed on a web show called Mani as a girl named Skye.
-A girl named Sophie was also on the show. Her mother Heather Nichole wasn’t sure what this would lead to, but they soon became friends with Piper and Tiffany.
-At the time, Sophie was very lonely and says that she and Piper would become like sisters.
-The girls would continue to do Mani until Tiffany would pull Piper off the show due to another girl getting lines. She wanted Sophie to leave too, but Sophie wanted to stay and remain professional. This would end her relationship with Piper and make her realize that Tiffany was very unstable.
-Piper’s cousin via marriage (her mom is married to Patience) Claire also wanted to be in the spotlight and looked to Piper as inspiration. Their other cousin Reese felt the same way.
-The three girls would soon bond and allow Patience and Tiffany to fix their broken bond caused by Tiffany’s divorce.
-Sawyer, another Squad member recalls working with Piper and making videos with the girls (including Sophie and Corrine), along with other kids, including Hayden and Gavin. Thus, The Squad was born.
-The show is a hit and getting millions of views. They were soon the top preteens in the world and would go on tour to meet their fans.
-Everyone loved the fame at first and the fun that went along with it.
-Piper would also make music during this time and she was super-famous. She was making a ton of money from YouTube and was landing brand sponsorships and deals from major companies such as Walmart and Target.
-Steevy had no idea how much money could be made on this platform until Tiffany explained things. She began to wonder where Corrine’s money was and initially believed that Tiffany would help her make said money.
-Before long, Heather, Piper, Tiffany, Hunter and Sophie would all live together so they can make even more content and so they could support each other. They would bond and become like a family.
-Everyone would have their own channel, all of which would be connected. The kids were shooting videos all day, every day in between school with no real break.
-At this point, people would see tension between Tiffany and Piper.
-The filming was taking a toll on everyone, and the kids were soon faking it to make decent comment.
-Corrine was doing other work as well, making her mom question Tiffany’s way of running things since there was no teacher on set or labor laws. However, they didn’t realize how labor laws are different for social media content.
-Tiffany and Piper would rescue cats, with as many as 36 in the house at the time. This would cause Tiffany to become obsessive with the cleaning and would make everyone do the same, causing even more tension in the house.
-With Tiffany becoming more unstable and the videos going more viral, everything became a numbers game. The kids would stage things, including being mean to others and doing things that made them uncomfortable.
-Tiffany would end up having a creepy fascination with Gavin, which made things even worse. Since it was done without the parents around, the kids were just left confused. Corrine would finally tell her mom about what was going on with Tiffany, causing her to get kicked out of The Squad and Tiffany forcing everyone to turn against her…..even threatening other members if they kept in contact with Corrine.
-Things took a shocking turn when Tiffany would force herself on one of the males on The Squad….
-Tiffany, Piper and Hunter declined to be a part of the documentary via their attorney.
-Tiffany denies any wrongdoing.
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