The owner of a beach club known as the White Banana Beach Club in the Philippines, G Casaccia, has recently lashed out at self-proclaimed social media influencers, suggesting that they should find alternative methods to try and eat, drink, and sleep for free.

Casaccia posted a message to Facebook, which he admits was supposed to be sarcastic in nature, and was an attempt to try and discourage social media influencers from attempting to gain free stuff from his establishment.

They allegedly get contacted frequently by social media influencers, claiming that they will offer advertisement of the venue in-exchange for goods or services. The message will read something like, “coming with X amount of people on X day, we need rooms and food in exchange for content” etc. Casaccia, who called them freeloaders, thinks their influence might not be as good as their money. He has suggested that those asking for free stuff from his establishment try to work instead to pay for the things that they need, or try another method to gain free food etc.

In an interview, he admitted that he found the requests to be disrespectful and that they'd sometimes get requests from folks who had less than 2,000 followers on social media.

His Facebook post quickly went viral and has fueled a debate now about the value that influencers provide, with people arguing over whether they view the requests as entrepreneurial or if this is a form of new age begging.

As far as how influential a social media account might be, follower count doesn't tell the entire story.

That's because quite often you'll find accounts with very few followers that have much higher engagement and therefore will sometimes likely be more successful in recommending products or services to their followers.

Social media influencers are making tens of thousands of dollars today for just one post, for some it's hundreds of thousands.

There are "kidfluencers” as well that are making thousands. They're also frequently seen to be more valuable to advertisers and more influential than A-list celebrities. It's easy to see the appeal to many, why they'd strive to try and achieve the same, to become an influencer in a niche that they too might be interested in.

Did Casaccia take it too far in shaming those who tried to exchange their content for his goods and services? You can't know if someone will be open to an exchange until you ask and it doesn't hurt to ask, if you don't mind the possibility of your request being rejected. It must get tiring for business owners though, who might be contacted on a frequent basis by all levels of social media influencers who are asking to do business. Sooner or later they might just snap.