The other day we watched Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix, a docudrama based on the true story of Australian, Belle Gibson, who fraudulently claimed to have terminal brain cancer. By 2015, she had amassed a huge following on Instagram, having claimed that she had successfully cured her cancer through a plant-based diet and natural therapies. She also produced an app, The Whole Pantry, and a book published by Penguin. She is also said to have generated a small fortune, some of which she promised to pass on to charities and real cancer patients. That never happened.
Docudramas usually state that they are based on fact, but when I watch a story about a con job, I want real, unblemished facts. So I managed to watch the BBC documentary, Bad Influencer: The Great Insta Con, which is factually based and left me tearing my hair out and asking, nay, shrieking, what the double-f were these people thinking? And when I say people I mean the gullible millions who believe the crap that so many influencers peddle.
Did it not occur to any of them that there was something dodgy about surviving brain cancer (which takes many forms by the way) for so long on nothing but an alleged diet of fruit and vegetables? It takes a special kind of psychopath to fake cancer, and how this woman isn’t locked up is beyond me.
Famous For Being Famous
You may also have heard of Kim Kardashian, who is described as an American media personality, socialite, and businesswoman. She has 357 million followers on Instagram, 10 million on TikTok, and 75 million on X. She first rose to fame following the release of a sex tape in 2003, later marrying Kanye West, aka Ye. Both are famous simply for being famous and having gazillions of social media followers. But what do these two contribute to society?
If It Looks Too Good To Be True…
There’s no denying that most of what we see on social media needs to be taken with a large grain of salt, even more so today with AI being used to distort facts.
But what I find the most disturbing are lifestyle influencers, usually unnaturally enhanced women with ghoulishly botoxed lips and pumped up plastic breasts, who target young girls with, you too can live like this and look like this. This often leads to shame, guilt, and in the worst cases, suicide. Listen, I wouldn’t mind having the chiselled features of George Clooney, but the fact is, I haven’t, so perhaps parents should take their daughters aside and tell them that they should live in the real world. Or simply say, listen, Love, you’re never going to look like that, no matter how hard you try!
Even more shameful is multi-level marketing, targeted mainly at low income women through Instagram and other platforms and is now a multi-billion dollar industry which has its roots in Utah, USA. The hook is more artificially enhanced women who promise a lavish lifestyle of flash cars, six figure incomes and holidays in the sun.
Fun fact
Many years ago I was once drawn into a similar scheme for selling water filters and attended one of those happy-clappy, quasi-religious cult events which promised to change my life forever. Fortunately I saw the light, got on my bike, started my own company and made some real money.
Investigations have revealed that in the UK alone, over 400,000 people, mainly women, have signed up to these pyramid schemes, with most of them either falling into debt by buying overpriced beauty products at a 400% markup or earning no more than $20 after six months of networking. The bottom line is recruit, recruit, recruit, and the statistics are hideous, as with any pyramid scheme – just a tiny percentage of recruits ever make anything resembling even the statutory minimum wage. On the other hand, most of the money rises to those at the top of the pyramid, and you know what usually floats to the top, don’t you?
It’s Not Just Women And Young Girls Being Influenced
You may have heard of Andrew Tate, the macho, misogynist influencer, recently charged with sexual offences in Romania and similar pending charges in the UK and US. He and his brother swim in the ‘manosphere’, promoting toxic masculinity, which degrades women with over 9 million followers on X alone and billions of views on TikTok. His entire philosophy is based on putting the man back into masculinity, promoting the view that women should stay at home, to treat them as sexual objects, to enslave them, and essentially degrade them. This has been, and still is, such an influence on young men and boys that in some schools, they won’t even speak to female teachers. His views are seen as extreme right-wing, antisemite, and he has garnered a huge following of those influenced, which is often described as cult status. It all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? History repeating itself?
Conclusion
Influencers in one form or another have been around for hundreds of years, with politicians being the worst offenders – they promise the earth but deliver nothing. And modern-day influencers don’t care about you, despite how much you want to think they do. They’re in it for themselves at your expense, and to think otherwise is simply foolhardy.
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