By Abigail Aguilar –
She was friendless in school, but on Instagram, Taylor Alesia was a hot hit. She got to 1M followers, and that led her to something she never thought she would do: take off her clothes in front of the camera.
“I was naive,” says Taylor, whose real last name is Compton. “If somebody told me, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Today, Taylor is a Christian, warning young ladies of the dangers of vanity and popularity on social media. She has an online Bible study and encourages girls that modest is hottest.
When her parents told her the family was moving from Long Island to Arizona, little Taylor Alesia was happy: She would be the new girl in town.
But as soon as she stepped off the plane, she wanted to return immediately to New York. Everything was brown.
Things only got worse. At school, she couldn’t make friends. She had a weird New York accent, and people from Arizona despised people from New York, she said.
Taylor was raised in a semi-Christian household.
Because she didn’t have any friends, she played with bugs at recess and lunch. Of course, that didn’t help her standing with the kids groups at all.
“They would call me the bug girl,” she says.
In middle school, she tried to fit in by going to parties. The kids would gang-up on her and tell her she was not welcome. They literally escorted her out of party after party.
Since she lacked human interaction, she went online seeking attention and friendship. Despite being rejected by her peers, Taylor was pretty.
She shot up on Instagram, YouTube and Musical.ly, the precursor to TikTok. Routinely, she got hundreds of thousands of likes. Not only did it shore up her insecure ego, it became a source of “friends” for her. She would even text strangers regularly.
As she came of age, she struck up relationship with Tanner Fox, who was big on YouTube at the time. They had a organic and fun relationship, and Tanner taught Taylor to edit videos.
When they broke up, Taylor’s world came crashing down. She took to alcohol to cope with her insecurities.
Imbibing alcohol caused her natural inhibitions to drop. During this time in her life, she posted very risque photos.
At some point, she became very worried about money. In the group she was running with was a friend who suggested she could make lots of money on Patreon, which at that time worked like OnlyFans does now.
Taylor had already posted very revealing photos. She was desperate for money. She had become addicted to social media popularity. What would it harm to now post some nudity? By little steps in one direction, she fell to this.
The money was crazy. She would buy Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton, but luxury didn’t fill her heart – or offset the guilt, shame and regret that plagued her.
She began dressing all black and sported a fake nose ring. She felt like a different person.
“I couldn’t recognize myself in the mirror,” she says. “It sucked. I was like I’m making the easiest, most money I’ve ever made in my life. Yet why was this not fulfilling?”
Her stint on Patreon didn’t last long. The regret and shame tormented her. In a bout with health anxiety, she found herself in the doctor’s office, saw a black pamphlet about Jesus in the waiting room, snatched it and stowed it in her bag.
She found herself in her Jeep calling out to Jesus: “This is so weird, Jesus, if you are real, I want to know you. Obviously you’d be able to hear me right now. If you’re real, I want to know you.”
Instantly, the shame evaporated. In its place, peace flooded her heart.
“For the first time ever, I experienced a peace that goes beyond understanding,” Taylor says. “I had complete peace, that I was searching for and wasting so much time and gaining so many regrets and so much shame. Just coming to Jesus that shame washed off of me.”
She knew Jesus was real.
She bought a Bible from Barnes & Noble. Eventually, she had to find a church. She prays and reads her Bible every day. Her social media, which previously was a display of vanity for a false sensation of status, is now her opportunity to share the newfound treasure.
When she dropped her testimony, she lost 500,000 subscriptions overnight. But when she posted a video “Your last breath,” scores of people reached out to her and asked questions about Jesus.
Once the flaunter of flesh, Taylor now promotes modesty and marriage on her channel.
She reflects on how she fell into Satan’s trap. On the one hand, feminists are telling women they don’t need a man. Then money insecurity led her to fend for herself – ironically pandering to men to get money. It’s a type of prostitution that is cloaked as “free speech.”
“That money did not belong to me, it belonged to the devil and it was it was dirty money,” she says. “People think it’s the quick, easy way to make money, and that’s always the devil. He offers the quick easy way. With God things are slow but things are great.
“Every other path other than Jesus is going to lead you to destruction every single single time,” Taylor says. “If you are not walking with Jesus, you are walking to your impending doom, destruction and hell. People want to dress it up and don’t want to talk about Heaven and Hell.”
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