Annette Sharp: Will Nadia Bartel’s friendship with Ellie Pearson survive Instagram video?

The absence of product endorsements in the video of WAG Nadia Bartel snorting white powder from a plate suggests it truly was posted in error, writes Annette Sharp.

And the Influencer’s BFF of the Month Award goes to Melbourne spray tan spruiker Ellie Pearson, for what’s said to have been an honest mistake — the narrowcasting of live footage to Instagram of her buddy and business partner Nadia Bartel snorting a line of an expensive white powder from a cheap dinner plate.

An absence of “tags” — for the featured crockery, Bartel’s manicurist, the purveyor of the white powder, the jewellery in shot, the apricot scrunchie on the wrist of the dark-haired woman holding the dinner plate — suggests the footage was indeed posted in error, although just how that might happen is a mystery to this Insta-noob.

Nadia Bartel (l to r) with Emily McKay, Rebecca Judd and Ellie Pearson at a Spray Aus event.

Pearson, for the uninitiated — and that was most of us until 48 hours ago — runs a Melbourne tanning studio whose investors include Bartel and her reported “best friend” and fellow ex-AFL WAG, model Rebecca Judd.

Bartel, meanwhile, is a mother-of-two who was previously married to retired Geelong player Jimmy Bartel.

Bartel has been assiduously courting Insta-fame for years and has made a name for herself as an influencer on Instagram, where she can regularly be found plugging everything from her own fashion collection, Henne, to Fine Lines lingerie, to the Melbourne Cup, to her mate Judd’s athleisure range Jaggad, to skincare brands including La Roche-Posay, Ole Henriksen and Marc Jacobs Beauty.

These she promotes along with other brands to her 556k followers. Correction, 560k followers — she’s picked up 4000 since Pearson’s post went viral on Thursday night. That post has since been deleted.

The post on Pearson’s Instagram …

… has since been deleted.

It seems hard to imagine how the women’s friendship might survive the gaffe, if media reports are true and they are as close as reports suggest.

When viewing friendship through the filter of Instagram or Facebook, it can be hard to tell a genuine friendship from a mutually beneficial business affiliation.

The lines can sometimes become hopelessly blurred.

Those at the top of the influencer pile primarily use Instagram to flog products or an image, after all.

Former Influencer’s BFF of the Month Award winner Roxy Jacenko has had more Instagram influencer besties than most of us have had chicken dinners.

These include social blue-blood Francesca Packer Barham, swimwear model Lara Bingle (now Worthington), chicken heiress Jessica Ingham, a swag of PYTs who once worked for her and, who can forget, Candice Warner.

Jacenko and the former champion ironwoman busted up after the pair came to blows in a boxing challenge on reality TV show SAS Australia.

Jacenko was Warner’s manager at the time.

Candice Warner takes a swing at Roxy Jacenko in an SAS Australia challenge. Picture: Nigel Wright

As the PR maven was quick to announce to the world via Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O’s popular radio show, her “friendship” with Warner was finished because Warner followed the rules on the TV reality show and took a swing at Jacenko.

Warner would later reveal the two women had never been close and were merely business associates, an association Warner ended privately in the weeks before Jacenko went to the radio show and found a sympathetic ear for her side of the public break-up.

If Bartel lived in party-loving Sydney, she would likely have no trouble finding a sympathetic ear for her public mea culpa.

In prudish Melbourne, however, forgiveness could be a long time coming.

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