And I just, it was like a light bulb went off that I was like, I feel so compelled to share my thoughts and opinions publicly to Did that happen to you?

Absolutely.

It was also with an influencer who I was following, which I think is probably not an uncommon story or, as I said, villain origin story.

So mine was with an Australian wellness influencer, and I had been following her for quite some time, again, in my young mid-20s.

And I won't say her name, but if you're privy to her story, you'll know who she is.

But she had announced that she had been diagnosed with SYN3, like a precancerous diagnosis.

And she decided that she was going to heal it or reverse it naturally with food and supplements.

Have you seen a few or a lot of those style of accounts?

[laughs]

Well, once again, uh, that's Harry Chang.

And like I mentioned, thanks to a follower of mine, he's now on my radar, and if he's on my radar, well, he's gonna be on your radar, too, especially because he's at least one of the missing puzzle pieces in this whole AI slopfluencer supplement nonsense.

He has over 90,000 followers on Instagram, and his bio reads, "Learn AI influencer marketing.

400 million plus views, two million plus tracked revenue.

How I profit $61,000 per month with AI," and then a pointing down emoji, and then a link to his YouTube.

The actual July 2025 post that this follower of mine sent me was from the account Creators' Corner, which we're going to get into, but let's just put a pin in that for now.

Yeah.

Got it.

Yeah.

Just so we got all of our, everything clear there.

Speaking of the more kind of like integral influencers, Alex Clark, who is the host of the Culture Apothecary podcast, I have talked about her here before.

She is a huge Maha influencer and incredibly politically involved.

She posted a photo of herself much less done up than she normally is.

She's laying down looking beyond her phone with what appears to be a single tear running down her cheek.

Then you find out it's just an advocacy site focused on sustainable agriculture and the certification is registered to a company in Bulgaria, which functions as a for-profit certification and licensing operation.

like science, education, whatever, what are kind of some of the things that you regularly see that maybe the everyday person doesn't recognize? I don't know if there's any kind of things that spring to mind when I say that, but they're only like tips and tricks that you see a lot of these influencers using that can kind of hoodwink people.

Yeah, I think mostly, like I mentioned before, these influencers are, well, they're working in a space that is unregulated.

And so they're making claims in a way that professionals that work in spaces that are regulated wouldn't be able to make.

And so they're making claims that sound very absolute.

There's no mention of like data or statistics or testing because there doesn't have to be in that space.

And so I always like to use the, you know, parasite cleanse example where it's, Or I even made a video where I kind of like made up my own, where it was this example of if someone told you that the reason that you were feeling unwell or off is because you were filled with fairy dust, and then they tried to sell you a fairy dust cleanse, that's like a red flag.

And so then if you apply that to other things that you see online, like this parasite cleanse trend, this person is telling you that the reason you're feeling unwell is because you're filled with parasites.

But I'd love to hear your take on where kind of like fear and urgency and the moral language gets used to push products or behaviors and how you observe that.

Totally.

I really can't think of a better example, like you said, Julian, than this to talk about parasocial relationships in the wellness influencer space specifically and what that can mean for your health.

It's clear that Alex Clark's job is to influence you to buy what she's advertising.

There are discount codes galore in her show notes and on her Instagram.

This is, of course, how being an influencer works.

And she will also make space in each episode to promote what her guests have to sell.

But when your show really only has contrarian health and wellness guests and the topics of discussion are really only controversial health claim after controversial health claim, where is the line drawn of when your listeners should be influenced by what you're saying or you would like them to be influenced by what you're saying? And maybe they shouldn't be influenced by what you're sharing.

Is that the feeling?