Says, “I owe it all to dying young”
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS – In a shocking turn of events that has left the social media world reeling, a deceased 19-year-old has posthumously claimed the coveted Golden Hashtag Award for “Most Influential Digital Creator of the Year,” beating out living competitors with millions of followers.
The spectral sensation, known only as @EtherealEmily on various platforms, began posting from beyond the grave six months ago, quickly amassing over 50 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube with her haunting content that literally gives viewers chills.
During the award ceremony held at the Beverly Hills Social Media Summit, the ghostly influencer materialized on stage in a translucent evening gown, causing three audience members to faint and two security guards to flee the venue. In her acceptance speech, delivered through a series of electromagnetic pulses that translated into text on the venue’s screens, Emily declared: “I owe it all to dying young. Death really opened up my creative possibilities, and the algorithm loves authenticity – what’s more authentic than speaking from personal experience about the afterlife?”
The paranormal phenomenon began when Emily’s social media accounts mysteriously reactivated three months after her tragic car accident. Initial posts featured eerie mansion tours, tutorials on communicating with the living, and fashion hauls from “beyond the veil” – content that quickly went viral due to its genuinely otherworldly production values.
“I’ve been monitoring social media trends for fifteen years, and I’ve never seen engagement rates like this,” said Dr. Margaret Holloway, a digital anthropologist at MIT who has been studying the supernatural influencer phenomenon. “Emily’s posts generate a 340% higher interaction rate than living influencers. Her ‘Haunting Makeup Tutorial’ crashed Instagram servers for six hours. There’s clearly something beyond our understanding of traditional social media dynamics at play here.”
The ghost’s content strategy appears to leverage her unique position between worlds. Her most popular series, “Ghosting My Ex,” features Emily literally haunting former romantic interests while providing dating advice to her followers. The episode where she rearranged her ex-boyfriend’s furniture to spell out “YOU DESERVE BETTER” garnered 89 million views in 48 hours.
Corporate sponsors have been surprisingly eager to work with the deceased creator. Emily has secured partnerships with several major brands, including a makeup line that claims their products can be “seen from any dimension” and a meditation app that offers guided sessions for “connecting with departed loved ones.”
Skeptics have emerged, questioning the authenticity of the phenomenon. However, these doubts were largely dispelled when Emily performed a live stream séance that successfully contacted the spirits of three viewers’ deceased pets, providing specific details that had never been shared online.
“I was there when she manifested physically during the Gucci collaboration announcement,” reported entertainment blogger Jessica Chen, who has covered influencer culture for Variety. “The temperature in the room dropped forty degrees, and my phone started playing her theme music even though I hadn’t opened any social apps. She tried on the entire fall collection, and when she walked the runway, her footsteps left actual ectoplasmic residue. This isn’t some elaborate deepfake – this is genuine supernatural influence.”
The award victory has sparked intense debate about the future of digital content creation and whether deceased creators should be eligible for industry recognition. The Social Media Creator Council has announced they’re forming a special committee to address “post-mortem content policies” and determine guidelines for supernatural influencer verification.
Emily’s management team, which consists entirely of psychics and medium specialists, reports that she’s already working on expanding her brand into podcasting and launching her own cryptocurrency called “SpiritCoin.” They’ve also announced plans for a world tour, though venue bookings have proven challenging due to insurance complications and local ordinances regarding supernatural events.
The characters and events depicted in this story are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events is unintentional and purely coincidental.
