Spheres of Influence, Circles of Hell: On the Lash in Turkey’s Playboy Country
July 18, 2024I am on Turkey’s Bodrum peninsula for the grand opening weekend of a new all-inclusive, adults-only hotel geared towards the global content set. With resorts in Dubai, Ibiza, Miami, and anywhere else rich, young, boundlessly attractive people congregate, the group that owns it is notable for its Instagram-conscious aesthetic. Think clean lines, highly curated spaces, and massive poolside signage.
I’m fascinated by the number of content creators and influencers slated to be at this curtain raiser, and just how out of my depth I’ll feel. This is their strange new world, and I am merely here to holiday in it. I’m here to get so drunk, but I’m here for culture as well, and so I quickly learn in the airport’s duty-free that vapes are illegal.
This is my first fully-comped press trip ever, and due to the state of the industry, certainly my last (note: I lost my job the day after I returned from Turkey). I should, therefore, see the PR systems at play with the clarity of a child savant calling out a strange relative in front of the whole family.
On Friday we go down to breakfast. It’s hot. 95 Fahrenheit or so. I am wearing all black like a maniac. In front of me (my group is otherwise entirely made up of women) is a cup with something ‘Live, Laugh, Love’-y written on it, and a waiter says “Anything can happen” as he pours iced latte into it. There are stunning influencers everywhere—eating at tables, drinking at the bar, lounging by the pool—and I’m reminded that the world wasn’t always like this. Fifty-three percent of Gen Zers in the US aspire to become influencers, with nearly 1 in 5 of their UK counterparts striving to make content creation their primary income. In a very real, very not-made-up sense, these guys are the new astronauts, the new athletes, and a lot of them are here in Bodrum.
Some of them have the beauty and depth of entourage to suggest they are very famous. For now, I watch from afar as they busily sell dreams of themselves, and of this place, in order to generate further consumption: human adverts, their abs billboards, their faces beautifully blank canvases for dramatic golden hour lighting. Of our group, only one is a full-time content creator: Klaudia Fior, or @wavyute. Her content is a mix of travel, food, soccer, and day-in-the-life-type stuff. She also uses her platform to promote human rights causes. She has 120k followers on Instagram, 562k followers on TikTok, and she is very boisterous.
I ask the barman for water, and he comes over and pours vodka in my glass. Fior keeps us updated on her content plans. She wants to do an MTV Cribs-style video of her jumping in the pool while wearing roller skates. She is very loud, and possibly tough, but that doesn't preclude her from being sound, either. The scale of her fame hits in dribs and drabs, but I learn people were sneaking shots of her in the airport. Content fame knows no borders, I think. And then I have a frozen strawberry daiquiri.
‘Mojo’ by Alicia Aylies pumps from the speakers. The pool is wild: lagoon shaped with infinity edges and a pentagonal hole in the middle, below which is an additional receptacle wall into which the pool water slides. The pool hole drops about 8 meters to the level below, on which there is a gym and other amenities. The waiter (one man, Mustafa) is on rollerblades. Just skating about with people's orders. I have a frozen pina colada. I’ll have more.
A succession of deranged bugs make their way into our room: a huge millipede on the first night, a massive moth on the second. As I return it to the outside world, I see an influencer dancing in front of an iPhone stuck to her sliding balcony door. Everything is content here. And I am turning that content into second-hand content.
I go for a dip at 6PM, the sun easing off. There's good-looking guys, and girls, and a solid number of Sopranos characters if they were Turkish, too.
At the far end of the pool, I see men, one with a professional camera, and another with an iPhone, snapping a peroxide blonde with dark roots wearing a deep brown bikini. They are photographing her in the pool from a second-floor balcony. A third man is in the pool with a phone attached to a 2-meter pole he wields clumsily like a boom mic. Then I spy a fourth man lying down by the pool, shooting close-ups. I see she has a martini. Even more people appear, snapping the blonde on a phalanx of iPhones. As ‘Frisky Disco’ by DRNRT plays, I can’t shake the feeling she is the final boss of the influencers. The Bowser of Bodrum.
Fior came from Poland to south London aged 8, knowing virtually zero English. She studied journalism at undergrad, and PR, marketing, and advertising at master’s level. She was working as a social media manager when a production studio asked her if she’d be willing to present a dating show—she eventually did it, and a clip from it went viral, leading her to set up her own TikTok. Her old job went under, and so she was forced into making content full-time. That was three years ago, and she hasn’t looked back.
“I always had main character syndrome. I thought it's just my world, and everyone else lives in it,” Fior says.
How does life compare with before? “It's very easy. The career gives me comfort, not only in terms of financial stability and freedom, but it gives me a lot of access to anything I could potentially want, whether that's events or being able to speak to certain people I might want to work with. Having followers gives you a foot in the door. And I'm more confident.”
I say it must be nice having so many people embrace you for being yourself. She admits she’s “Marmite,” a British term relating to splitting opinion.
I ask her what the drawbacks are. “I don't really get any privacy. I cannot walk down the road drunk. There's absolutely no way—a little kid will come up to me, ‘Oh my gosh, the girl from TikTok!”
I ask if she ever struggles to feel fully present, seeing as she’s constantly having to capture moments on camera, living life mediated through content production. “Yeah, this is probably the second [biggest drawback]. I'm constantly thinking about content. My brain’s always running 100 miles an hour, even if I go on holiday.” She says she sometimes orders food from crappy takeaways because she knows she won’t feel compelled to record an “eat with me.”
“I'm constantly thinking about content. My brain’s always running 100 miles an hour, even if I go on holiday.” –Klaudia Fior
It’s a cool life, though, I say. “I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. I love what I do. It's a great job. I think I want to go down the path of more broadcast media a little bit—I started as a journalist. But I know social media is still going to play a big part in that.”
I ask Fior if she ever feels any guilt or shame around the way she makes a living. “No, not at all. I get a lot of comments saying ‘Oh, some people get life handed to them on a plate.’ And I'm like, ‘You know what? I just had my big break. I worked my ass off to get to where I am. It just happened that when it did happen, my career grew very quickly.’ Everyone could do it. Pull out your phone and record yourself. Why should I feel bad? If people ask me for advice, for help, I'll give it to them. I do have moments sometimes where I'm like, ‘Oh, I have all this money. Why me?’ And then I just go donate to charity. I'm fine.”
As I make my way to the evening drinks reception, here is Bowser and her support team shooting a choreographed ‘arrival’ scene in a plant-lined passageway. I know everyone here is an advert, but this is like an actual advert. We have to go through, though, to get upstairs. After some performative apologia, me and my gf enter the vestibule with Bowser and her camera crew. Bowser’s face… is fucking stern.
After a few drinks, we go for dinner down toward the beach, which is a stand up, grab-what-you-like situation. I have a red alcoholic drink. I make eyes at one of the servers holding canapes that belies my ‘fat child’ years. I have another even larger red alcoholic drink. A supermodel (it’s obvious when someone’s a supermodel) with impossibly long legs stalks past.
Men arrive on the beach—which doubles up as the dancefloor—to take pics of the DJ. ‘Um, Mia Mia’ plays. The light goes off, and my girl says “What happened?” The lights come back on, and a woman appears, offering me another large drink. Tequila. Lights off again. I am offered three different types of food (mostly cheeseburgers), but I am too full of hotdogs. Make that four (samosa-looking things).
Lights go off and on about a dozen more times. The music's thumping, and it's the sort of scenario in which my mates would start calling numbers.
I am descending now as a drone flies overhead. Every time a drone flies overhead, I crane my neck and look up directly at it, presumably ruining the videographer's intention and vibe. I get more fucked on the strong drinks and then I go marching back to the hotel to use the toilet (which was unnecessary as there was a beach toilet), except I walk into the women's. A male cleaner sets me right.
On my return I see a man is in his underwear halfway between the hotel and beach, just sort of hidden in an alcove. Via WhatsApp I am beckoned by the girls to dance by the beach. I have two more drinks there.
On our walk back to our room we see a gorgeous calico cat drinking out of the pool, and so we stroke him a bit. Fantastic little cat. Then we order a Caesar salad and a rice pudding for room service. I eat almost all of it and vape on the balcony until I can’t any longer.
I’m struggling the next morning. When I go out on the balcony, I see a woman diving into the pool with a man filming it on one of those fucking stick phones. Everything is content. Me and my gf have an absurdly good brunch when I spot Bowser through the window a few meters away sat smoking outside, and so I ask the waitress if she knows her. She doesn't. “She's probably social media famous.” One of her friends has a Deftones tattoo (Koi No Yokan).
I don’t make it to the rest of the group until about 2PM. I have already missed morning yoga, sound healing, and I will also miss “the power of crystals surrounded with astrology.” I walk into the beach restaurant and once again I have to swerve another of Bowser’s choreographed scenes—this time she is rolling the suitcase in the restaurant. I sit with the girls and their food looks sensational. I am too ill though, I fear. They marvel at my ability to drink a lot on a night out and not show it as I start to feel as though I might whitey, feeling the blood draining away from my face.
And so I go for a swim in the sea, doing multiple laps halfway to the buoy line and back just to revive myself. A small yacht or large speed boat is taking revelers standing on the dock out onto the Aegean.
I ask Fior to get me cigs when she ventures into town. I get another frozen pina colada at about half 3. No actual journalism happening. Then under the wind-blown veranda I shut my eyes and the intermittent sunlight breaks through my eyelids.
An insane red bug lands on my shorts. I don't see it for a while, and when I do, I say, “Oh fuck!” and bat it away.
My gf arrives, Dua Lipa comes on, and so we talk about the smoothness of Lipa's music, the lack of weight and grooves to it. It's a take glimpsed on the NY Times pop music podcast, and it's something I wholeheartedly believe, too. It’s similar to the reality being conveyed here at Hyde and by the influencers. Everything is picture perfect, aspirational and uncomplicated. It's a fantasy life.
Everything is picture perfect, aspirational and uncomplicated. It's a fantasy life.
We stay on the bed for a few hours before heading to the pier boardwalk to catch the late sun. There are more influencers taking snaps here. One Italian man, especially, who is going full Baywatch on the stairs leading into the sea (he’s a philosophy student, ironically enough, I’ll find out later via Instagram). A squat Turkish female lifeguard watches on, perhaps bemused beneath a deadpan exterior.
It's possible I myself—bald with dark tache, increasingly tanned—am looking more Turkish by the hour.
Later we get dolled up for the final dinner with the girls. A whiskey drink is handed to me on the way to dinner down by the beach.
Fior arrives, very animated. It turns out she got shafted by the taxi driver because vapes are, in fact, illegal in Turkey. I offer her mine, even though it might be coiled. She says “I'll take what I can get.”
She chats to the camera she’s holding behind her far shoulder and I spin around suddenly, confused by who she's talking to. I will be in the back of the video turning around awkwardly. She says there’d been some confrontation earlier in the sea with a Russian over content territory.
The mosquitos are out and so Fior grabs one out of the air and kills it in her fist. She turns and chucks it behind her. It is said a former Miss Worldwide is here (Turkish), and it’s clear it’s the supermodel I’d clocked a day earlier. We talk about Michael Jackson, Diddy, and R Kelly. R Kelly comes out the worst.
I try out my Poland and Ukraine knowledge on Fior. I tell her about my granddad, who was on the verge of opening a limo company in Poland when he sadly passed away 30 years ago. I could be the heir to Big Limo in Poland by now, I joke. Big fucking Uber Poland Nick.
Then I start to fucking yap. I yammer about how I accidentally labeled a former manager a “psychopath” because he likes his steak well done and was let go soon after; I talk about the ethics of going on Hinge holidays and men’s attitudes to dating porn-adjacent women. Fior explains how a mate of hers went to a sex party and accidentally became the bartender. It is mooted by one of the girls that we should all take a Charlie’s Angels pic with me in the middle, a “Nick’s Angels” situation. I would like that very much, I say.
One of our party has a subreddit specifically about pics of them that men can wank over. She doesn’t love the idea, but supposedly they are somehow chivalrous in their goondom. We talk about threesomes, zaddies, and Santorini.
Then we hit the pool party, where we have a table reserved by the water. Famed Turkish DJ Memut Orhan is set to headline. Some of the girls read my ridiculous notes while Bowser and Co. have a choreographed rave for the cameras on her balcony above us. They soon stop. I drink another three drinks. Euro dub remix of ‘Jamming’ by Bob Marley and The Wailers plays. Orhan is on the stage serving up shellers.
A camp Euro guy wearing a kilt is strutting about as if the poolside is his catwalk (he's been at it all weekend). A man comes with drinks and I take a couple. I chat to one of my fellow journalists for a while before returning to my room with my gf to charge my vape. We're both giddy. I try to slap her bum and miss each time.
I commit a mortal sin by vaping straight out of the wall for a bit. The party is absolutely raucous and literally penetrates our room: blue lights from the party are seemingly trained on our windows only. It's a hive of people, of arms and figures moving in the neon darkness below. These are big bangers from Orhan—a pinger wouldn't go amiss.
When we get back I lend my vape to one of the journalists. She makes faces as if the vape is too intense. I am simply that guy, I think. The vape has coiled though, definitely.
A blonde influencer with very striking cheekbones, three rooms over from Bowser and one above, is swishing her head while holding the rail like her head just has to fall off. Studies suggest social media makes us sad, and here I am watching the physical manifestation of its Main Character-izing effect, and I can’t stop. There is a spotlight on her balcony, probably by chance (but possibly not, it’s hard to know what's organic at this point).
I clock kilt guy again and he's also wearing Doc Martens.
The next morning I enforce the Charlie's Angels photo shoot idea. When that's over, we say goodbye to our new friends. Me and my gf brunch, sadder now that it’s all coming to an end. Later, by the pool, Mustafa the roller waiter appears with a mint green drink. I ask what it is. “I don't know.” OK, I say. “Anything can happen,” he says, before skating off. It's actually unbelievable what Mustafa can do on his skates with trays of drinks in his hand.
We have our last meal—crispy chicken club for me, crispy chicken club for my partner. The insanely hot Miss Turkey Worldwide strolls through, then it’s finally our turn to leave.
When our taxi arrives, I try to say thank you to the manager in Turkish. I don't smash it, actually, and so I show him the translation of what I've tried to say: “Teshekular.”
Long after my stay at Hyde, I find out the identity of ‘Bowser’, the woman I perceived to be the apogee of the influencer phenomenon. She is not massively famous, like I’d assumed, but rather a local yoga instructor with 2,500 followers who runs something called ‘POPO KAMPI’, which translates as ‘BUTT CAMP’. The slippage between reality and perception mirrors my experience at Hyde, where I’d been granted one-off proximity to the ‘talent.’ The promise of the influencer is that you too can do this, all you need is some matrix of looks, charisma, and luck. Fuck it. Maybe I will (I won’t).