As a writer of health books since 2009, I know the world of health, media and marketing a little bit....
Mainstream media + The old social media
Fifteen years ago, there was plenty of focus on health in mainstream media, and online social media was actually in its infancy. It worked like this:
- Mainstream media: We put statements by someone with a different health-narrative from what is leading at the institutes down as a 'nutrition guru' and then we mount a professor or spokesperson from the Nutrition Centre behind it who debunks everything. So if you are not a professor or part of an institute, you can only get into the media by shouting something extreme like 'sugar is poison'. Thus, as an outsider, you were not rewarded when you shouted or wrote something nuanced.
- The old social media: There are no algorithms so virtually no preselection of what you see. If you were friends or following someone, you saw almost everything and if you didn't like it, you could simply unfollow someone
Limited visibility + Punishing algorithms
As a health expert, if you wanted to share nice nuanced information that really helped people that worked very well on social media. What wonderful times those were for me and my Hormone Factor. Unfortunately, this has changed over the years. It first started with the limiting your visibility which you could then buy back by paying for promotion of that post. This was unfortunate, but it still worked for me.
Unfortunately, this was not a permanent situation. There came algorithms that punished precisely nuanced posts harshly. What does score is quick sensational content? Especially things that make people angry, confused, scared, things that are too good to be true, violent posts where people are in conflict with each other, sex and lame jokes are rewarded by the new algorithm. This has meant that in health land, there are actually two types of 'influencers' that get the most attention, namely:
Charlatans and charlatan-hunters
How do you actually recognise them?
Charlatans:
- Make a small detail related to health the main issue and make a far too vehement unsubtle blanket claim, such as: Phytic acid is dangerous for everyone, sugar is poison, too much omega-6 causes autoimmune diseases.
- Make almost obsessively many claims contrary to 'consensus' to get noticed.
- Don't address 'haters' but don't address neat criticism either.
- Are often inspired by American vloggers. In fact, this style is widely used there.
Charlatan-hunters:
- Claim to be engaged in charity, but also have their own revenue model.
- Parasitise mainly charlatans with many followers and not the 'little ones'. So they don't just criticise a statement, but mainly mention their name (or even tag them) to get more reach.
- Charlatan-hunters themselves rarely if ever come up with good science-based solutions for people who want to live healthier lives.
- Almost never attack unsubstantiated statements by professors or authorities.
- Are not looking to really engage with the charlatan to come to a compromise together and understand each other. After all, the witch hunt may not stop.
This is a situation we have unfortunately found ourselves in on social media. When you want to live a healthy life, both charlatans and charlatan-hunters are ultimately of little or no use to you. I fear this is not going to change for the time being either. By readers of my books, reels or posts are often forwarded to me from charlatans and charlatan-hunters alike, and whether I will take a moment to my opinion want to give. I fully understand that this confuses people. Can I do anything about this? I think not.
All I can do is keep sharing beautiful nuanced content, even if hardly anyone sees it passing by in their timeline on social media. Waiting for better times on social media, I stay....
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