At this point, it’s common for influencers to try to sell us all sorts of products based on their lives, from hamburgers to clothing lines, cologne, or even television series. That’s the case with Pokimane, who has 9.3 million followers on Twitch, 4.2 million on Twitter, 6 million on Instagram, and 6.6 million on YouTube. Basically, that’s an economy more powerful than some countries. So, it didn’t seem so strange when she announced her own cookies. The problem is everything that has happened afterward: a black hole of secondhand embarrassment.
Stop being poor
Pokimane claimed she had been working on her company, Myna Snacks, dedicated to maintaining good health for her customers, for two years. In fact, their initial product was the Midnight Mini Cookies, a cookie made with gluten-free coconut flour, no genetically modified ingredients, and containing vitamin D. The problem? Well, among many others, they cost $28… And there’s a strikingly similar private label product (some might even call it a copycat) for a significantly lower price.
Myna’s product costs 300% more than the seemingly plagiarized one (both manufactured by the same company, Creation Foods), the Toatzy Midnight Mini Cookies, whose name is surprisingly similar… and it recently ceased selling, seemingly paving the way for the introduction of other nearly identical cookies without allowing people to compare.
But of course, the audience began to call Pokimane out on this. Her response, during a live Twitch stream, was to make the worst possible decision: calling her audience “poor.” Obviously, she later retracted her statement in several interviews, claiming that her goal isn’t to make money but to bring goodness to the world. At $28 per box of cookies.
“When people say ‘Oh my God, $28 for cookies’… It’s four bags, I mean, $7 per bag. I know, math is hard when you’re an idiot,” she continued, leaving her viewers stunned, especially considering that she had been known as a kind and friendly personality until then. It was the kind of joke where you insult your fan base by calling them poor and idiots. The future of the cookies and her healthy food line remains a mystery, but things don’t look promising for her business venture. Let’s just say, it’s going to be a rough cookie to swallow.
