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THE CUT

Where in the World Is Evie Davis?

By Loren Fasuco

It's officially been two weeks since mega lifestyle influencer Evelyn Davis has posted online. Fourteen days of no Instagram stories or vlogs from the internet's little sister or best friend or dream girl, depending on who you're talking to. Fourteen days with no branded content from someone who is rumored to be the youngest person to ever garner seven figures from a sponsored TikTok. Fourteen days of silence.

The rumors, though, have been quite loud for almost as long as she's been gone. A quick Google search will land you in forums where people discuss where, exactly, Evie has gone. Is it a stunt? A way to drum up even more attention? A political statement? An allotted period of recovery from plastic surgery? Rehab?

Last week, Evie's mother and fellow social media star, Erin Davis, was interviewed about her daughter's disappearance on the beloved true crime podcast Darker, confirming what the internet had been speculating: Evie Davis is officially missing. It's been twenty-four hours since law enforcement was forced to issue a statement of their own, one in which they confirmed Evie's disappearance, and that they are continuing to search for Evie around the clock.

The internet is not giving up, either. Evie fans and critics alike seem dedicated to finding answers, sharing theories, and pointing fingers—anything to get to the bottom of where Evie has gone and why. As of publication, there are more than 5,000 posts under the #FindEvie hashtag, and that's only one iteration. It's concerning when any person goes missing, of course, but some might say this level of public attention and concern feels different. More intense. And it's not just because this person is beautiful, or young, or white (though, of course, that is always part of it), but because she feels so close to so many people. Evie isn't some distant, blurry stranger to all those people, but a face they see every day. A voice they recognize. Someone who's part of their day. For many, Evie Davis has been on their screens for as long as they've been looking at one. And it's not so easy to just let go of something that you've had access to for more than a decade. But this isn't the first time an influencer has disappeared from our screens.

Take @HeyMadisonLee (2.1 million followers) for example, the mommy blogger-turned-momfluencer who spent years posting the elaborate birthday cakes she made for her six children and many throwback photos of her bespectacled husband—only to stop altogether at the beginning of last year after criticism about a political post, though apolitical is really the better word for it. Madison posted an apology saying that she now understands "everything is political when you have a platform," but she's since turned off all comments and stopped posting, much to the horror of her dedicated followers. It has been more than a year since she was last online publicly. Still, you'll see her name pop up on message boards if you frequent the places that talk about influencers the most. There are reports she now lives with her family in the Midwest on a sprawling 1960s ranch. You'll still hear chatter from the dedicated people who follow her husband's private account, too. But for most of us, Madison remains gone.

There are darker shades of disappearing, too, of course. Take the mysterious case of Cheryl Danielsen, a twenty-eight-year-old Louisiana wife, mother, and momfluencer who made headlines in late 2019 after disappearing for nearly two months. After seven weeks of searches and nonstop media coverage, Danielsen wandered back into her home bloody and bruised on a Wednesday morning, explaining that she had been abducted from a jogging trail. It took a few more weeks for police and then, of course, the public, to discover that the entire event was staged by Danielsen, for reasons that are still mostly unclear to investigators. The evidence may be murky, but theories have been out there to scroll through since she disappeared. Some guess it was an affair turned botched attempt to escape her own life and the online persona she built. Others believe the opposite: it was all a stunt for more followers.

Again, there is no publicly available evidence to support any of these theories. But if we were to consider that the latter was true—that it was all a dark stunt for attention—then you could say it was a successful endeavor for Danielsen, who gained more than 750,000 followers in the time she was missing. She hit one million three days before she was arrested and charged with making a false report. Currently, she is serving month twelve of an eighteen-month sentence. Her account is silent, but it's still there. And one day she may be back on our screens, and we'll all find out together how long the internet's collective memory is.

And then there are stories that are less flashy, easier to forget. Take Dani Tan, a clean beauty influencer who built her brand and following by outlining the ways our deodorant and other personal care products were "poisoning" us, according to her. One day she was posting five ways to use apple cider vinegar, and the next she was gone. Tan simply stopped signing on one day in 2021, leaving her followers—"Tanatics," as they called themselves—to wonder where she had gone. Was she going through a breakup, or having health issues? Did she hate them? Hate Instagram? If you know where to look online, there's still chatter about Dani. People have reported spotting her on a little-known trail in Joshua Tree, but others are skeptical. And either way, Dani continues to stay silent on social media. Believe it or not, Dani Tan doesn't think she owes anyone an explanation.

So what do influencers owe the fans that built their platforms, their wealth? The answer is a matter of opinion, or maybe of values. What are the boundaries of a job like this? What qualifies as entertainment, or as a relationship? Wherever you land on these questions, it does make you wonder if the Cheryls and Danis and Evies and Madisons of the world are getting sick of us the way so many of us seem to get sick of them. Even the mysterious SABI, the go-to source for all things influencer gossip and rumors (plus surprisingly thoughtful, witty commentary about it all), has seemed to quietly fade into the background lately, leaving its 25,000+ subscribers hungry for more, waiting, asking similar questions to the ones we all have about Evie Davis: What happened? Why did it happen? What do we do now?

For now, if you ask the police and her family, Evelyn Davis is missing. If you ask the internet, however, Evelyn Davis is everywhere. One look under the #FindEvie hashtag and you will be met with dozens of blurry photos of women around the world who look, from one angle or another, like Evie. She's on a yacht in St. Barts. She's on a ferry in Croatia. She's in a museum in London. She's on a hike in Asheville. And though law enforcement has found her car and her phone, details that media outlets have run wild with, they insist that evidence has stopped cold after that. The rest of us know the feeling. There's no evidence that she just went shopping at the mall. No evidence of her go-to order from Sweetgreen. No evidence of what she thinks of the newest season of Love Is Blind. No evidence of her morning smoothie, her evening lemon water, her latest workout set. Her opinion on abortion bans. Her thoughts about Botox. There's none of that for us to sift through anymore.

Maybe she had a mental health episode, the internet says. Maybe her boyfriend killed her, the internet suggests with a shrug. Maybe she's exactly where she wants to be or maybe she's in the darkest, scariest corner of the earth, the kind of place where women disappear to when they wear the wrong thing or give someone the wrong idea or are too nice or not nice enough. All the speculation can sound like concern on its face, or maybe just curiosity if you're a bit more cynical. But if you look a bit closer what you'll find is what has always been there. A raw, shameless need. A hunger to know everything there is to be known about a person. You'll see exactly what it looks like when people are suddenly denied access to something they've consumed for years.

The Cut has reached out to Erin Davis and law enforcement for comment but has not received a response at the time of publication.