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Aug 9, 2023

A note to all those who get influenced

 


Sorry for sounding harsh. I happened to watch a video that exposed the truth behind parenting influencers.

I don't follow the content of these influencers and so I had no idea about the issues that this person who exposed the truth talked about. As I was watching the video, there were quite a few thought-provoking and disturbing revelations that were brought to the limelight.

He also brought out many pertinent questions that were running through my mind as well over the past few years.

We say, in Tamil, "Emaravanga irukkara varaikkum emathuravanga iruppanga" (As long as there are people to be fooled, there will be people to fool them).

Just like food influencers, influencers are sprouting across every aspect of life.

There's no way these so-called influencers are gonna take social responsibility.
They will continue to launch their expensive workshops, write books, travel the world, buy second homes in exotic beach locations etc.

It is up to the people who are getting influenced to take charge of their lives.
This is the message I tried to convey when I used to review the nutrition labels of packaged foods in 2017-18.
This applies even more to today's times when there are "coaches" mushrooming for parenting, health, lifestyle and whatnot.

Your fear is their investment.
Your ignorance is their VC funding.
Your laziness is their profit-making machine.

Why laziness?
Because we don't want to do our own research.
We don't want to do critical thinking and ask questions.
We don't want to seek the truth and gather facts from real experts.

We want to take the easy route - a package deal where someone distills dos and don'ts, where someone can just offer quick-fix solutions, and where our thinking effort is minimal.

I had to use the word "Lazy" here in this context, based on my biased experience. Having written around 80+ reviews of packaged foods, there were multiple DMs asking me to review and answer if a particular packaged food brand is healthy or not. When I asked them to read up the articles and understand nutrition label decoding approach and decide for themselves, there weren't much interest or inclination to do the reading work. Wanted a quick answer. Also, I had written a detailed post about reversing PCOD and the lifestyle changes that had helped me. There were questions on whether there are quicker and easier ways to reverse PCOD than doing so much. There were also questions on whether green tea will help in losing belly fat and are there any quick fix solutions to lose belly fat or overall weight loss. 

I request all who are consumers of content/workshops/courses to please do your due diligence - read, research, understand, critique, and ask questions instead of blindly believing and adopting whatever is being conveyed.