- Aris Yeager shot to fame by parodying a spoiled, rich European caricature on social media.
- Yeager recently told Business Insider about his online persona.
- He also talked about how he’s leveraging his popularity with his influencer-focused app Storytime.
The lines between reality and fiction have started to blur for Aris Yeager.
You may have seen the 24-year-old Belgian-American, better known as “The European Kid,” at some point on your social media feeds.
Yeager has built a sizable online presence over the last couple of years — accumulating 1.7 million followers on TikTok and one million on Instagram — by making videos that parody a sort of spoiled rich European caricature through a French-accented persona named Louis.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with!” Louis shouts in one video, trying to persuade well-known New York City bouncer Fabrizio Brienza to let him into a club. “The richest family in Europe! Do you know who my dad is?”
The video, which has over 45 million views on TikTok, is a prime example of just how bizarre Yeager’s life has become in a short time, he told Business Insider in a recent interview.
Many viewers did not pick up on the fact that his videos are satire, so some assumed he was the son of Bernard Arnault, the richest man in Europe who founded LVMH, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët & Chandon, and other luxury brands. Major French television station TF1 wrote a story about the mix-up, and Alexandre Arnault, the real son of Bernard Arnault, had to clarify that it was not him in the video.
“Even when you looked up Bernard Arnault on Google, my video was one of the first videos that popped up,” Yeager said. “To me, that is one of the craziest moments.”
But the conflation between Yeager’s and Louis’ life goes further than being mistaken for billionaires’ sons.
While his videos are a parody, Yeager is still personally in places like Saint-Tropez, St. Moritz, and the Hamptons, after all. Because of his newfound fame, he’s mingled with celebrities like Formula 1 driver Carlos Sainz Jr., actor Anne Hathaway, and snowboarder Shaun White.
“I could be a Formula 1 driver,” Louis told Sainz in a video earlier this year. “I’m not saying I’m going to beat you, but I think I will.”
Yeager said that brand sponsorships have allowed him to generate an income somewhere in the six-figure range.
Still, his life isn’t exactly like Louis’ might appear. Yeager said many of his videos shot in seaside villas, private jets, boats, and luxury city apartments are actually offered up by real-estate agents looking to promote a property, jet and boat companies looking to advertise, or friends.
“Everything on social media is exaggerated,” Yeager said. “You need to always take it with a grain of salt.”
He also said that on trips to exotic places, he usually stays only a few days and is primarily there to shoot several videos for his channel before returning to New York, where he’s lived since graduating from Northeastern University in 2022.
That’s because Yeager is busy building a business that seeks to pair influencers like himself with — perhaps ironically, given his big-brand, rich-kid persona — small businesses looking for promotion.
The platform is an app that launched in April called Storytime. Yeager founded it with Philip Davis, his former colleague at Lefty, another influencer-focused startup.
So far, Storytime has financial backing from Lefty founder Thomas Repelski, as well as around $150,000 from family and friends, Davis and Yeager said. It has 1,000 influencer users that they individually vet, they said, and over a hundred businesses that pay a $100-a-month subscription fee for access to the pool of influencers. The businesses can automate offers for free products in exchange for posts from influencers with localized, targeted audiences, as opposed to larger follower counts that may be irrelevant to a particular business.
One client of Yeager and Davis is Milano Market on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The duo recently filmed a video with its owner, where Louis attempts to buy an entire $2,000 wheel of parmesan cheese, only to be stopped by the owner who is concerned about Louis’ intentions with his product.
“Putain, let me buy the parmesan,” Louis cries.
“You can’t,” the owner replies. “Not here. Not here, my friend.”
The video has 66 million views on TikTok.
“Those are the kinds of places. I walk in there, and I can tell there’s so much passion,” Yeager said, striking a different tone than an entitled Louis often carries — one apparent way Yeager’s life doesn’t appear to be blending with Louis’.
“When I’m there, I just want to give back because I just appreciate them.”
Read the full article here
