Influencer Tells Angry Viewers to ‘Just Book a Flight’ to Thailand

• A travel influencer filmed herself swimming in Thailand and said others should do the same.
• Viewers called her out for being out of touch and pointed out it wasn’t easily affordable for most.
• In response, she said she wasn’t born rich and didn’t leave the US until she was 18.

An American travel influencer who told her viewers to book a vacation to Asia was met with backlash as TikTokers pointed out it wasn’t easily affordable for people who weren’t wealthy, but the influencer hit back and said she wasn’t born into privilege.

On August 17, Kat Crittenden posted a video that showed her swimming in turquoise waters in a tranquil setting, while she asked the viewers, “What are you still doing in America?”

In the upload, which received 5 million views, Crittenden said she was in Thailand, and told her viewers this could be their life on a Thursday night too, “if you just book a freaking flight,” and added in a caption alongside the video that she was trying to convince people to travel.

The upload received over 12,800 comments which appeared to be largely critical of the influencer’s cavalier attitude towards the cost of traveling, and the suggestion that everyone could afford to do so.

“I’ll put living paycheck to paycheck on hold so I can do that. Thanks for the advice,” a viewer wrote and received over 7,000 likes.

Multiple popular comments called the TikToker “out of touch,” accused her of being privileged, and suggested only those with family wealth could afford such a trip.

“I don’t have rich parents,” one viewer wrote.

Crittenden has over 300,000 followers on TikTok where she regularly posts travel videos. She told Insider in an interview that she hadn’t expected such a response when she first recorded the video.

“When I posted the video, I posted it fully as a happy, lighthearted video, just kind of trying to inspire people to go out there and go explore the world,” Crittenden said.

Crittenden explained that the video was recorded on July 3, while she was frolicking on a beach at Thailand’s Koh Phi Phi islands. Crittenden said it was a spur-of-a-moment decision to film the video for her TikTok account.

“So I thought since my entire social media is all based on travel, so I figured I would post a fun video,” Crittenden said. “It was just like a one-shot speaking my mind is like, ‘Oh, what are you guys doing in America? Go fly around the world.’ And then I just posted it.”

Crittenden told Insider that while she could understand how her video could’ve been misinterpreted, she was still pretty upset by the backlash.

“I understand that I do have a lot of privilege to be able to do what I do, but at the same time, it upsets me that that video was taken the wrong way,” Crittenden said.

Crittenden pointed out that a majority of the comments made claims on how she was financing her trips with her parents’ money, OnlyFans donations, or a trust fund.

“Those get to me because it’s not true at all. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, I grew up making my own money,” Crittenden said.

In a follow-up video posted a day later, which received an additional 973,000 views, Crittenden responded directly to this comment and could be seen once again filming in the ocean as she addressed the criticism.

In the upload, Crittenden appeared to reject the idea that she used money from her parents, said her only experience of traveling growing up was “going to Wisconsin” to visit family, and said she hadn’t left the US until she was 18 years old, which was when she started traveling alone. She concluded the clip by sticking her middle finger up to the camera.

In a caption alongside the video she wrote, “I am endlessly grateful that I could go see my family and this video is not complaining about that AT ALL, it’s emphasizing that I travel with my money and I worked for this and saved for this for years myself.”

Crittenden told Insider that her trips were funded by savings she earned while working minimum wage jobs at retail stores and coffee shops.

“I would say the worst comments for me are when people say it’s daddy’s money because that could not be further from the truth,” Crittenden added. “I feel like it just bothers me because I didn’t have a good relationship with my dad growing up. I haven’t even spoken to my dad in five years.”

Over 2,000 people responded to the video, emphasizing that to travel at all, even within the same country, was a privilege. Some people also commented the issue with the original video was not that she was able to go to Thailand, but her suggestion that viewers should simply book a ticket too, when they may not have the means to do so.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 71% of Americans had traveled internationally at some point in their lives, although 48% of people whose income was lower than $30,000 a year had not left the country, compared with 28% of those earning between $30,000 and $79,999 a year, and 10% of those earning more.

Crittenden believes that part of the backlash stems from the assumption that people have of travel influencers being all play and no work.

“I think a big misconception when people see these travel accounts is they think that they are traveling 24/7 all around the year, which is just not true,” Crittenden said.

“What we do is we’ll travel for one to four months, and then we’ll come home for one to four months and we’ll pick up freelance jobs, minimum wage jobs, gig jobs, and we’ll work stuff like DoorDash, Uber, little jobs like that to be able to make money to keep traveling,” she continued.

Crittenden is not the only person to have gone viral unexpectedly. Marketing executive Tiffany Gomas became notorious after her outburst on an American Airlines flight in July went viral. Gomas’ meltdown spawned a flurry of memes and jokes online, with some even calling her the “crazy plane lady.” She eventually apologized in August for losing control of her emotions.

Crittenden told Insider that the backlash isn’t going to deter her from posting more travel videos on TikTok.

“Honestly, I still love doing it. I mean that’s one video out of probably hundreds that I’ve posted. And the hundreds of other ones have been seen by the people who follow me and they like watching them, and they’re all like very fun people,” Crittenden said.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here.

Editor’s note: September 6, 2023 — This story has been updated with comments from Crittenden.