Never a good opening line. Right up there with “we need to talk” and “I have concerns.”
The link takes me to a TikTok by someone named Marlowe Pennington. CityMama Unfiltered. Three hundred thousand followers. That specific brand of mommy-blogger aesthetic where everything looks effortless but you know she spent four hours getting the lighting right.
When you recognize your own former self and want to crawl into a hole.
The video opens on Marlowe’s perfectly highlighted face doing that fake-concerned expression that almost every influencer learns in their first month.
“Okay so I normally don’t do this,” she starts. Already a lie. This is exactly what she does. “But I’ve been seeing something around the school communitythat’s honestly concerning and I think we need to talk about it.”
Cut to a photo. Me and Ben at school pickup yesterday.
Oh God.
Someone snapped it from across the street. Ben’s face is blurred but mine isn’t. I’m crouched down doing the hand squeeze. Frederick is visible in Ben’s arms.
“So this is the new nanny for a certain very wealthy restaurant owner,” Marlowe continues. Her tone is dripping with that weaponized concern a certain brand of influencers use when they’re about to absolutely destroy someone while pretending they’re just asking questions. “And here’s the thing. She used to be a YouTuber. Had a pretty decent following. Then her content stopped being relevant and she basically disappeared.”
My face heats up. There it is. My failure laid out for public consumption.
She keeps going. “And now suddenly she’s working for one of Manhattan’s most eligible widowers. Living in his house. Taking care of his daughter. And I’m not saying anything but like, we’ve all seen this pattern before right?”
Cut to screenshots of tabloid headlines about influencers becoming paid escorts. Ending on a still about Instagram models getting flown out to Dubai to be literal human toilets for rich men.
When your new job gets compared to being shit on.
Fantastic.
Hitting some career goals here.
“I’m just saying,” Marlowe’s voice continues over the graphic, “we need to be careful about who we’re letting into our children’s spaces. Is this someonewho’s here for the right reasons? Or is this someone who saw an opportunity and took it?”
The next slide shows the Range Rover. Jag holding the door. Marlowe’s added price tags to everything visible in the frame. The stroller. My bag. Ben’s school uniform.
“Forty-two hundred dollar stroller. Eighteen hundred dollar diaper bag. And that’s just what we can see. So I’m asking the question nobody else wants to ask. What’s the real arrangement here? Because this feels less like childcare and more like a different kind of transaction. If you know what I mean.”
The video ends with her signature sign-off. “Just asking questions, mama bears. Stay vigilant.”
I watch it three more times. Each viewing makes me more nauseous.
The comments are exactly what you’d expect. Half the people defending me without knowing me. Half piling on. Everyone speculating about whether I’m sleeping with Marco. Whether this is some kind of sugar daddy or escort situation. Whether I’m using Ben to secure a rich husband.
When strangers on the internet are ninety percent right and you can’t even defend yourself.
I set the phone down. Stare at my reflection in Ben’s bathroom mirror.
The worst part? I understand exactly what Marlowe’s doing. Because I used to do it, too. I was that brand of influencer myself.
I’m not proud if it.
I’d find a target. Frame it as concern. Let the algorithm do the rest. Farm engagement off other people’s pain and call it community service.
And when I stopped making that kind of content, mychannels died.
I know, it’s hilarious, but social media companies actually reward this kind of behavior.
She’ll probably hit half a million followers by the end of the week.
And I’ll be the cautionary tale she built her empire on.
