MEXICO CITY — Thirty-four-year-old American expat and popular TikTok travel influencer Kyle Settler announced Sunday that he would be rebranding his social media channels from “Expat Diaries” to “Immigrant Diaries" after he confronted his true identity at a 5-day plant medicine retreat in the Valle de Bravo.
According to fellow participants, Settler entered the San Pedro ceremony hoping to heal his fear of intimacy and "unlock a high level strategy for subscriber acquisition" for his YouTube channel. Instead, somewhere around hour six, he reportedly broke a sustained silence to declare, "Wait... I'm literally an immigrant."
Witnesses say the revelation sent ripples throughout the space, which was full of other expats from the Global North.
"I've spent the last four years identifying as someone who is exceptional and above the standards of immigrant — I always believed that if you could afford bottomless mimosa brunches and had a Soho House membership, then you were too good to be an immigrant," Settler told the group through tears. "That version of me was just an immigrant with better branding."
Settler was reportedly removed from the space after requests from other ceremony participants who claimed that he was “bringing a dark energy into the space.”
Friends say Settler has already begun making dramatic lifestyle changes. His Instagram bio now reads "Immigrant • Guest on Indigenous Land" and he has replaced every use of the word expat in previous posts with person who migrated consciously.
Local residents described the transformation as "encouraging," while noting they had reached the same conclusion without spending $4,800 on a boutique retreat that included cacao ceremonies, sound baths, and artisanal integration journals.
At press time, retreat organizers announced that they would be rebooting their vetting system to ensure that only expats with bulletproof ego defenses would be accepted into their next cohort, as people who identify with the label ‘expat’ are the types that also tend to pay a premium for a week of ancestral plant medicine.