“Spill the Teh”, containing the Indonesian word for “tea”, is a regular Coconuts Jakarta series that explains and gives much-needed context to the country’s freshest social media dramas, particularly for an English-speaking audience. What better way to get assimilated to the country, right?
In this edition, we are covering the Tasyi Athasyia controversy, after the influencer was accused of not paying her employees, among other forms of alleged mistreatment. Sit back, cross your legs, and sip up.
Update June 14: Tasyi has posted a video apologizing for all the hurt her actions have caused.
Original story follows below.
In the tail end of last week and over the weekend, Tasyi Athasyia’s name dominated social media discourse in Indonesia. The 31-year-old is considered an A-lister among Indonesian influencers, having amassed 1.8 million followers on Instagram and 3.15 million subscribers on YouTube, where she regularly posts content related to food and her home life.
Tasyi is also the twin sister of Tasya Farasya, another popular social media influencer and YouTuber, with whom she has a frosty relationship due to several well-documented sibling conflicts in the past.
Yet the latest controversy surrounding Tasyi does not involve her twin sister. Last week, a woman named Risty Oktaviani, who claimed to have worked for Tasyi as her personal assistant, spoke out against her employer online and alleged that the influencer failed to pay the salaries of her employees for several months. Other employees also made similar accusations.
The public soured towards Tasyi even more as footage emerged that allegedly showed her mistreating her employees. One viral video, allegedly taken by one of Tasyi’s assistants at a restaurant in Dubai, showed the influencer dining at an exclusive table while her employees sat at another table and were allegedly only given her leftover beverages to drink.
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Netizens contrasted Tasyi with mega celeb Raffi Ahmad, who, on one occasion, treated his 14 employees to an IDR1 million (US$67.32) lunch each during their trip to Switzerland.
One photo, reportedly taken from a CCTV recording at a mall, shows a female personal assistant lugging huge shopping bags allegedly belonging to Tasyi, while the influencer and her husband walked ahead of her. The photo has not exactly done wonders for Tasyi’s reputation, with some saying working for an influencer like her is demeaning and is akin to slavery.
Netizens contrasted Tasyi with mega celeb Raffi Ahmad
#FaktaTasyi
Though Tasyi has not directly addressed the accusations against her, the hashtag #FaktaTasyi (Tasyi’s facts) became a top trending topic on Twitter for several days. The hashtags contained tweets that defended Tasyi from the accusations.
However, netizens began to suspect that these hashtags were part of a paid campaign by Tasyi to improve her image and reputation. As reported by Liputan 6, social media sleuths picked up on the possibility that Tasyi had spent IDR17 million (US$1,144) to hire some 4,000 “buzzers” (netizens and/or bots hired in such campaigns) to tweet positive things about her while calling into question the credibility of her accusers.
That may have slightly worked in Tasyi’s favor. Her former employee Risty recently posted a video clarifying that she had previously left out the part where she quit her job without any notice, which explains why she did not receive her latest pay. Risty apologized for causing the controversy with her initial accusation against Tasyi.
That said, other accusations against Tasyi remain unaddressed as of this article’s publication.
Indeed, successful influencers need a team of assistants to ensure a steady output of lucrative content. In Indonesia, however, personal assistants are exposed to the whims of their employers, as there are no existing labor laws or regulations guaranteeing their legal protection.
Few may have the fortune to get treated to a Swiss lunch by Raffi Ahmad, while other personal assistants can only hope to be employed by somebody who treats them with dignity, who can guarantee humane working hours, social security, as well as good and timely pay.
