It’s been a long time since we’ve heard anything about Saudi Arabia’s megalomaniac project, where Neom is the all-encompassing city and The Line is its most ostentatious offshoot. A $500 billion project wrapped in Saudi Vision 2030. Apparently, this silence was due to infighting between the project’s managers and investors. Now, the city of the future is getting help from the “professionals” of the digital world: influencers.

News. The Saudi government had hoped that Neom’s megacity “The Line,” a much-hyped long, narrow city between towering, mirror-like skyscrapers, would be completed by 2030 and attract 1.5 million residents. But the plan, like all of the work and more of these features, has been delayed and even budgeted.

In any case, a lot of vloggers and (micro)influencers are posting on social media about their lives in the still-developing desert city. The truth is, as an advertising campaign to convince others to move, it’s not the best. In fact, the posts aren’t very successful.

What is it like to live in Neom today? Experiences like that of Jessica Herman, a Neom resident and vlogger with 17,000 followers on TikTok, suggest there’s still a long way to go. The influencer has certainly been active on the platform in posting about her life in the burgeoning space. In one video, for example, Herman films what a night in “Neom 1 Community” is like: getting her kids ready in her industrial apartment, walking through what looks like empty streets and prefabricated housing, and heading to a modern “dining room” to have dinner with her family.

Like Herman, other mom vloggers like Sara Sarasid, who has over 24,000 followers on TikTok, and Aida McPherson, who has over 28,000 followers, have shared similar experiences living in Neom in recent months. The results are similar. While these families appear happy on the surface, the backdrops are far from the glamour they’re trying to sell. The environments are bleak. And industrial.

Reviews. It didn’t take long for them to reach the networks. One user, Joshua Hind, wrote:

There was also a lot of criticism from ABC News reporter Matt Bevan, who wrote about the sun. Others on the platform said the images from Neom were “sad and bleak” or that they looked like a “Mars colony” and had a “low-security prison vibe”.

Who really lives there? This is a big question. The fact is that we are talking about a project that is under development, and all these influencers’ videos, a priori, seem like temporary developments built while the city is under construction.

It is also unclear whether Herman, her husband, or the other Vloggers are government employees or are paid to film their lives in the city. In fact, Herman has since deactivated her account in the past few hours, after multiple media outlets picked up on her videos.

In the meantime…. The news in recent months has been less than one would expect from a project of this scale. We reported back in June that the project appeared to be falling apart before it could become a reality. Last month, the BBC reported that Saudi authorities had obtained permission to kill local villagers who were defying evacuation orders in order to open up the area for development. And according to the press, one person was shot dead after a protest.

A week ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a special that gave insight into the chaos inside the megalomaniac investment, with physical fights between executives and accusations of racism, misogyny and corruption. In fact, the outlet reported that in one case, an executive bragged about the deaths of three construction workers and said in a phone call that “we need to have a meeting on Sunday because a lot of people are dead.” In the meantime, the executive in question was replaced.

And all the while, investment costs appear to be unabated, leading Saudi officials to consider “recalibrating” the project, which has now become a source of concern within the Saudi government.

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