Influencer Olympics (Coachella)

About

Influencer Olympics is an internet slang term and nickname for the Coachella music festival, specifically referring to the social media influencers who attend the event every year to flex their outfits on social media. The term became popularized in April 2019 after a tweet calling Coachella the "influencer olympics" went viral, becoming increasingly prevalent over the following years.

Origin

Sometime prior to April 12th, 2019, now-deleted Twitter^[1] user @CherieMadelein posted a tweet calling the Coachella music festival the "influencer olympics." On April 12th, 2019, Twitter^[2] user @JLFHx posted, "Someone called Coachella the influencer Olympics and I am fucking crying lmaoooooo," garnering over 90,000 likes in four years (shown below). She credits @CherieMadelein in the comments section.

Spread

Following the viral tweet, some influencers attending Coachella began referring to the festival as the "influencer olympics" in their posts from Coachella 2019, continuing to use the term over the following years (examples shown below, left and center). On April 17th, 2019, the highsnobiety Instagram^[3] page used the term in a post that gained over 34,000 likes in four years. On April 19th, 2022, Instagram^[4] user and reality show contestant francescafarago posted photos of herself at Coachella captioned, "Someone called coachella the influencer Olympics and I can’t unsee it😅," garnering over 110,000 likes in a year (shown below, right).

On April 15th, 2023, TikToker^[5][6] @skylar.alyshia started posting a series of videos documenting influencer outfits at Coachella 2023, using the term "influencer olympics" in each video, gaining hundreds of thousands to millions of views with each post over the weekend (notable examples shown below). On April 16th, Instagram^[7] user _theblessedone reposted the tweet about the influencer olympics, gaining over 50,000 likes in a day. On that day, HITC^[8] then published an article on the term.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References