Influencers!

The first installment in an occasional series.

Scam Fam, what's good!

This time of year generally makes me feel like a human fungus rotting away below several layers of rocky soil in a patch of woods next to the highway. I take solace in the fact that March is less than two weeks away, and even though I'm always surprised that March is basically just more February, there is at least more daylight in which to do crimes in plain sight. Presumably spring will arrive eventually.

Another thing I appreciate about this particular week is that the novelty Ferrero Rocher boxes are still at the front of the drugstore. I don't have strong opinions about Valentine's Day one way or another, but I love candy and I love love. That said, on Thursday I saw some expressions of affection on Instagram that I found to be mad corny. Which is probably because the expression of most sentiments on most social media is mad corny, which is part of what I want us to discuss today.  

This seems like the right moment to introduce you to the unfluencer, a term invented by my friend and OG scambassador Erica — she was this newsletter's first subscriber and a big part why I even write these missives, so thank her if you like them. I feel compelled to tell you that Erica is the least mean spirited person I know, and while this word is definitely, 100% an insult, it's also a fact! Some people just make you embarrassed to share their passions when they post about them to the 10k -1M rapt (?) followers they've somehow amassed. Recently, my personal unfluencers have poisoned such delights as Hilma af Klint, Ling Ma's Severance, and, worst of all, spaghetti. I still adore all of those things because I’m just as basic as everyone else, but now I'm a little ashamed to admit it. On Valentine's Day, an unfluencer actually made me think, "Wow, it's sad that if I ever get married I can literally tell no one because I do not want to be associated with this mess."

Now that we've established that I am just, like, a better and more discerning person than you, and that I would never be so foolish as to worship at the altar of someone who poses looking over their shoulder coquettishly before a beautiful mediterranean sunset, let's talk about how those swimsuit clad sentient sims want to cure your cancer.

Suzanne Zupello covered this topic quite thoroughly in "The latest Instagram influencer frontier? Medical promotions," an excellent piece she wrote for The Goods. You should read it to see all the tacky people (Ian Ziering's wife makes an appearance and nothing about her will surprise you) who are hawking diabetes treatments and also to learn all about the intricacies of regulation and disclosure. My favorite part is that "the guidelines both [the FDA and the FTC] publish are, as per both agency’s spokespeople, intentionally vague." I think that's so when the s. hits the f. everyone can sue everyone else. Hallmark of a brilliant scam right there.  

It's particularly striking and gross that many of the influencers/unfluencers featured either do not suffer from the ailments they're trying to sell you on a treatment for, or do not use that particular treatment personally. I'd ask why anyone would trust them but you know as well as I do that people with clear skin and good muscle definition and hair that looks expensive are overall more trustworthy.

The other thing to consider is something Kate Sheridan covered in a super interesting article on this same subject Stat published last year*, "As social media ‘influencers,’ patients are getting a voice. And pharma is ready to pay up." That piece is more focused on Facebook groups, and it makes sense that within these communities people who are dealing with illnesses they’d never even heard of before diagnosis recommend various treatments to one another. It also makes sense that a whole cottage industry has sprung up to get these people on the payroll.

Enter Wego and Voz Advisors. It might be hard to tell from their websites which are a word salad of terms you hear in meetings that make you wonder if you're a fraud and have actually never done your job before before you realize those terms are just strange opposite day ways of phrasing really normal transactional stuff like "pay" and "charge" and "contract with" and "post on Facebook," but these are basically the FuckJerry and Fyre App of medical marketing. Seems like an extremely safe and chill business model to introduce into the not at all confusing or isolating world of chronic illness and suffering.

There’s a LOT more to say on this topic, and we’ll get to it in future editions, but I have a hustle to run. Today I’ll leave you with this: As I hope you are aware, I support getting that paper. If we ever find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of needing expensive medical treatments, let's agree right now to be the ones to shill for those treatments on social media instead of the ones following the advice of someone else's #spon. They might call us unfluencers, but they're not getting paid.

Scam in good health,

Ruthie

PS: Welcome to those of you who are new here. If you’re curious about my past work, you can read the archives, and I hope you will consider making my pyramid scheme operational by subscribing others with or without their consent.

*Thanks to my dad for sending this story to me! He is my most reliable source for scam headlines and you could all learn a lesson from him and notify me of grift in the wild by replying to this email.

My Week in Consumption

• Remember at the top how I talked about my current state of mind? Well, writing this week's newsletter was a struggle. I hope it doesn't read like that, and I'm sorry if it does. Anyway, I was sustained by one of my favorite snacks, the meat cone from Damascus Bakery on Atlantic Ave. The price recently went up from $1 to $1.50, but it's still a bargain, and if you're veg, there's a cheese one that I don't like as much because it's kind of soggy, but it’s still decent.

• "It was a mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were. Besides, you were not even living that deeply."

• Last week I forgot to mention that Text Me When You Get Home, written by my be fri and soulmate Kayleen, is out in paperback. Last year I blogged about how much I loved it and the endorsement still applies.

• I also started watching The Teenage Psychic on HBO. I've only seen the first episode but it had enough charm and Buffy vibes for me to recommend it here, and special thanks to another be fri and scambassador Julia for recommending it to me.