The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influencer

Lana Isa has 195,000 followers on Instagram, for videos that mostly consist of her shuffling around her quiet, tidy apartment. She slides a premade pizza into the oven, pours herself a wineglass full of Diet Coke, and settles in on the couch. Or she plays a crackling fake fireplace on her TV screen, dims the lights, and watches the rain fall outside her window. Sometimes she takes walks, tries new cafés, goes shopping. No one else ever shows up in her videos, though she occasionally mentions FaceTiming her mother. A typical subtitle reads: “POV you’re single, have no friends, live alone and won’t be having kids so this is your Friday night.”