Meet Instagram star Miquela Sousa, a mystery digital influencer

Miquela Sousa's Instagram account was recently hacked, as she informed her fans on the platform

Miquela Sousa won’t be walking up the stairs of the Abbey Road Studio in London anytime soon. Her heavily synthesised single “You should be alone” didn't make it to the Billboard Top 100, and 200,000 hits on her YouTube channel aren’t good enough for a record label to sign her, yet. But at 18, the Spanish-Brazilian California-based model, as her social media accounts describe her, has the grit of a seasoned superstar and the right friends in the right places. She can be seen hanging out with the likes of musician Diplo and record producer Nile Rodgers, to name a few.

She was recently rumoured to be in a relationship with rock band The Man's guitarist Noah Gersh, who was rumoured to be dating Dakota Jones sometime ago. Why wouldn’t the digital columns gossip? Her Instagram is a scrapbook of their pictures together. The petite young fashionista seems to have nothing to hide. She flaunts her freckles, promenades the streets of Los Angeles in Prada and parties in the clubs of New York.

Sousa is not afraid to pour her heart out on Instagram — where she introduced herself first in April 2016 and where over a million followers know her as @lilmiquela. She also posts frequently on Facebook and Tumblr and holds nothing back when talking about love, friendships and family, and about the life of a celebrity. “I was isolating myself and partying too hard,” she said in a recent Instagram post with a picture of a reunion with her family — notably Trevor McFedries and Sara Decou of robotics AI company Brud. She said the people she loved lied most to her and she now has to accept who she really is. “We have trust to regain... but it’s like a weight has been lifted off my chest,” the post read. With her unusual appearance and free-flowing emotions, Sousa counters the question of what’s real and what’s not, which makes social media personalities so difficult to fathom. But this was turning out to be a telltale in a different skin.

Her Instagram account was recently hacked, as she informed her fans on the platform. “It was the hardest week of my life,” she posted, and thanked everyone for checking in on her. The post was longer than usual and was not in her trademark forthright style. It was like she wanted to reveal something. What she wanted to say was not a secret anymore, but a public confession was overdue. A few lines later, she said it: “Ok, now here’s the hard part. My hands are literally shaking,” the post read. “I am not a human.” Her sense of humour was appreciated.

But before she was famous, “Miquelets”, as her fans are called now, took their time to understand what transmedia storytelling is — stitching together a life across different platforms. But even after people found out that she was not an actual person, they were so invested in this social media life that the mystery around her only grew.

Miquela Sousa is a Digital Art Computer-Generated Image model. Trevor and Sara, Miquela’s family, are her creators, who have given her a personality independent of their own. And they have made sure that the influencer in Sousa is not drowned out by wardrobe labels asking for tags on her “outfit-of-the-day” selfies.

One of her recent posts told the story of an eight-month-old baby who was separated from her family, because Sousa believes that #FamiliesBelongTogether. She said she was “horrified” at the Charlottesville shootings and supported the protests because she wants to spread the message that #BlackLivesMatter. Her Instagram account description has a link to donate to blackgirlscode.com.

Sousa appears to be, but is not the same it-girl on Instagram. Prada and Channel dress her up but don’t define her. She poses for selfies, while she holds a mirror to the world. She knows how to stand out on more than one count. In a world ruled by fake news, it’s irrelevant that she’s not “real”.