Sociologist and WELLNESS CULTURE author Stephanie Alice Baker joins us to discuss the rise of wellness influencers, why people are attracted to guides and gurus, the false dichotomy between expertise and personal experience, how the concept of intuition is used to market wellness products and practices, how wellness culture has become a gateway to medical misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, and more.
Dr. Stephanie Alice Baker is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Sociology and Criminology Department at City, University of London. Dr Baker’s research explores influencer culture in the context of health and wellness. She currently examines the amplification of disinformation, influence networks, and potential radicalization pathways online. Learn more about her work here, and check out her new book Wellness Culture.
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Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Amazon and Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission if you purchase.
Stephanie’s new book, Wellness Culture: How the Wellness Movement Has Been Used to Empower, Profit and Misinform
Stephanie’s first book, Lifestyle Gurus: Constructing Authority and Influence Online
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
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Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Welcome to Rethinking Wellness, a podcast that offers critical thinking and compassionate skepticism about wellness and diet culture, and reflections on how to find true well-being. I'm your host, Christy Harrison, and I'm a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, journalist, and author of three books, including Anti-Diet, which was published in 2019, The Emotional Eating, Chronic Dieting, Binge Eating & Body Image Workbook, which will be out on February 20th, and The Wellness Trap, which came out in 2023 and is the inspiration for this podcast. You can learn more and order it now at christyharrison.com/thewellness trap or find it wherever books are sold.Hey there. Welcome back to Rethinking Wellness. I'm Christy, and my guest today is sociologist and author Stephanie Alice Baker, who joins me to discuss her new book, Wellness Culture, which is obviously, a title that I love and couldn't wait to dig into. It's a fabulous book, and I'm really excited to talk with the author. We talk about the rise of wellness influencers and why people are so attracted to guides and gurus, the false dichotomy between expertise and personal experience, how wellness culture has become a gateway to medical misinformation and disinformation, as well as conspiracy theories, and lots more.
This is a great conversation, and I can't wait to share it with you shortly. Before I do, a few quick announcements. This podcast is made possible by my paid subscribers at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. Not only do paid subscriptions help support the show and help me keep making this free content and do it as best as I possibly can, but they also get you lots of perks that are only for paid subscribers, like biweekly bonus Q&A's, subscriber-only comment threads, bonus episodes, including one that I did with Stephanie, this week's guest, access to our full archives, and lots more. Just go to rethinkingwellness.substack.com to sign up. That's rethinkingwellness.substack.com. And if you're already a paid subscriber, thank you so much for your support. It truly means the world.
This podcast is also brought to you by my second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses, and Find Your True Well-being, which is available wherever books are sold. The book explores so many of the themes we talk about in today's episode, like the connections between diet culture and wellness culture, how the wellness space became overrun with scams, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, why many popular alternative medicine diagnoses are misleading and harmful, what attracts people to those in the first place, and what we can do instead to create a society that promotes true well-being. Just go to christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap to learn more and buy the book. That's christyharrison.com/thewellnesstrap, or just go into your favorite local bookstore and ask for it there.Now without any further ado, let's go to my conversation with Stephanie Alice Baker. So Stephanie Alice Baker, welcome to Rethinking Wellness. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm curious to start off by talking a little bit about how you got interested in writing this book. You have a new book out called Wellness Culture, which when I saw that that title was coming out, I was like, I must talk to the person who wrote this, because that is a huge interest of mine too, and I'm just curious what led you to be interested in this area.
Stephanie Alice Baker: So I think there was quite a distinct point in time when I became very interested in health and wellness in particular, and that was 2015. So around that period, there had been scandal involving a very famous wellness influencer at the time, And she had about 200,000 followers on Instagram and had built up this whole brand around curing herself with cancer, living a very holistic lifestyle.
Christy Harrison: Is this Belle Gibson?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. It would be what we'd refer to as a "wellness influencer" and then was exposed as a fraud. And that was really quite a pivotal time in terms of my work in this space, because I'd previously, personally been interested in health and wellness, and I was actively exploring digital technology in various domains, but I hadn't focused so closely on wellness. And that was a distinct point in time because a colleague and I wrote an article back in 2015 that turned into a book before this book on wellness culture. But it did definitely shape the trajectory of my career where what I now study is mostly health and wellness culture. That would be the distinct turning point. But as I said, I've had interest in health and wellness for a long time and was a yoga teacher. I completed my yoga teacher training back in 2010 when I was a postdoc in India.
So I'd always personally had this interest. But, yeah, as a researcher, it's definitely around 2015 that I pivoted very distinctly into this space.
Christy Harrison: That's so interesting. I'm curious about how your personal interest in this space informed, but also maybe was changed by, some of what you discovered as a researcher. Did you start to question anything you had learned in your teacher training or in your participation in the health and wellness space more generally as a result of this Belle Gibson scandal and then subsequent kind of diving into that research.
Stephanie Alice Baker: I definitely did. I mean, I think there's no way that you can study this space and not be impacted or be more critical with your interests and hobbies. By the time I was studying this, I was no longer teaching yoga. I actually was not really even practicing it as avidly as I had been. I was actually pregnant with my first child, so I was just not as committed as I think I had previously been. I still had an interest in health and wellness. My father's a doctor, so I think it's always been part of my life. But I think many different aspects have made me more reflective and critical of the community that previously I've been very much part of. And I think if anything, the research just solidifies them.
In a funny way, I also think it's made me more sympathetic to a lot of the people who find themselves caught in mis and disinformation as well, because I don't feel cynical about the space. And despite being critical of much of what I see and especially with regard to expertise and how expertise and authority and credibility are established. I'm actually really sympathetic to why a lot of people join these communities, why people find meaning and purpose in a lot of these spaces. And so it's kind of "yes and." I don't feel as though I would reduce health and wellness only to quackery or pseudoscience. I think there's still many benefits. And if I had the time, I think I would actually pursue a lot of practices like yoga more readily. It's just I don't romanticize them in the way that perhaps I would have a little earlier.
Christy Harrison: That's interesting. You mentioned being influenced by this sort of high profile downfall of an influencer, and you've cowritten another book about lifestyle gurus. You write a lot about wellness gurus and influencers in this book, so I'd love to dig into that a little bit. First, can we just start off by defining what is a wellness guru, and when did they start to really rise in the culture?
Stephanie Alice Baker: A guru generally is somebody that we would use to describe as an influential figure, but somebody that people look to as a guide or a teacher of sorts. In many ways, wellness gurus have existed for centuries. Many of the yogis you could consider to be wellness gurus or spiritual gurus, and there was a huge influx of yogis and gurus in the US in the sixties for various reasons, But when we use the term to describe these online influencers, really, we are describing somebody who establishes a following or an audience that they use for social, economic, or political gain. And so we often think of these influencers as somebody who just uses their brand or monetizes it as a career for profit. But, actually, a lot of these wellness gurus also have political messages that they try to share or to achieve a degree of fame as well. That's what I mean by social gain. So wellness gurus, in short, they've existed for centuries, I mean, longer. But in the context of an influencer, an influencer would be somebody who achieves a following and builds an audience that they use for social, economic, or political gain. And it's an audience that's built online, primarily social media.
Christy Harrison: Mhmm. What is the relationship of wellness gurus to expertise versus lived experience?
Stephanie Alice Baker: This is where I think the heart of the issue really is because many of the brands that we follow online, whether it's your favorite computer or your favorite item of clothing or an influencer who's also a brand, they build a brand by telling a story. So much of that story is something that relies on experience, it relies on anecdotes. And it's not something that can be objectively measured and tested. And so this becomes really problematic when you look at the wellness space because wellness influences or gurus don't only tell a story about who they are. Often their story involves some kind of heroic journey from a place of pain or trauma to a place of recovery and success. Again, the story is often very difficult to verify, but it becomes the basis of their brand upon which their credibility and legitimacy is built. And the problem therein is that much of the way in which they influence people is based on their story, this experience that they have endured or overcome. And many people who follow them are not only aspiring to be like them, they often seek to emulate them.And so if you look at the example of Belle Gibson, who was the influencer that was exposed as a fraud in 2015. Her story, her experience was as a cancer survivor who was told that she wouldn't live. And her journey was that through having these dietary changes, through rejecting chemotherapy, she actually triumphed. She overcame that cancer and she survived.
And so you see the problems there where the experience, which was very difficult for someone who bullied her to verify, became not only a lie, but a source of inspiration for people, and who knows how many people she influenced, whether it was a direct cancer patient or whether it was somebody who had a similar life threatening illness who saw her as an inspirational figure. And it doesn't have to be something as serious as that. We look at these wellness influencers online and people resonate with them because they, in some way, can relate to their story and it becomes often a model. Right? They're like a moral compass of sorts. And, again, this becomes very precarious when we find ourselves in situations like the pandemic where people look to these figures for advice. But, of course, on the one hand, we have no way of knowing if the experience that they share is true. In addition to the issue of verification, there's very little regulation in this space if they turn out to be a fraud. And so if you look at somebody like Belle Gibson, you know, she's still in the courts where they're trying to recover a lot of the funds that she was meant to donate to various charities. But there's no way of compensating for people who have lost their lives or who have shortened their lives through following the protocols that she shared online.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And that's true even if it's someone who's not a fraudster. Right? I mean, if it's someone who sincerely believes, or who knows if they believe it or not, but they are selling this idea that whatever it is they're doing is curing them or helping them overcome a disease. Or if they legitimately believe it and they say that it's working. Even if it is, it's still misleading because it's still telling people to ignore science and the input of experts, doctors, people who know their specific case and say, "well, I did it this way, so trust me." And, of course, anecdotes are not evidence. Right? This tension of valuing lived experience is important and has a place. And one person's anecdote, what worked for one person isn't going to work for everyone, and it's not scientifically tested and validated and shown to be more than a placebo effect, for example, or more than just regression to the mean.
You know, they were gonna recover anyway. They were gonna get better. They were already on an upward trajectory, and it just happened to coincide with doing some sort of protocol. And so they're gonna give that protocol credit even though it was nothing to do with it, really. All of that stuff is at play, I think, in anybody's individual experience. I would even like to say lived experience, because I feel like all experience is lived, sort of, personal experience, right. Individual experience might tell you one thing, and yet research and science and data might tell you something very different, That something maybe is a placebo effect, or maybe it is the result of one of these other sort of family of placebo effects, like the regression to the mean or all these other things that actually explain what's going on for somebody even though it's seemingly explained by whatever wellness protocol they're doing.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. It is also a way of making sense of our lives. I mean, this is part of the religious foundation in many ways of parts of wellness culture in the sense that people seek meaning. And part of the way in which that functions is through storytelling, is through the shared stories that we tell each other. Medicine needs to have a level of detachment. And even if you look at the way in which therapy would operate. Your therapist isn't meant to be your friend, or there's a level of distance that is appropriate in a medical setting. But I think when people go through difficult times or even when people want to improve their health, that doesn't provide the same comfort as somebody sharing their story and connecting over a shared vulnerability, which is the source of how we make friendships, which is beautiful, but it can also be problematic when you have these parasocial relationships online.
You can feel that very strongly. It's real in that sense. It is an emotional reaction, but it's one-sided. And whether the influencer or practitioner sharing the story believes it to be true or not, there are issues if the advice is problematic. That's the tricky issue we find ourselves in. It's not that every wellness influencer is a fraud. I think there's so many people who share good advice, but it's not a regulated space. There are some cases where it's obviously more serious than others. And I think when you're looking at medication and health or even financial situations or relationship advice, That's where it's more problematic.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. For sure. I'm also struck by the sort of presence of intuition and tuning in and listening to your gut in a lot of wellness gurus' admonishments or whatever. You write that they often remind their followers to trust their instincts and listen to their gut when navigating the vicissitudes of life and that they elevate sensory experience, bodily wisdom, and intuitive ways of knowing as superior modes of reasoning. I think that's really interesting and problematic too. I mean, for me personally, I'm a dietitian. I'm a journalist first, but then went back to school and became a dietitian. And my specialty within dietetics is intuitive eating and helping people reconnect to their hunger and fullness cues, their body's wisdom about food.
And we talk a lot about that sort of internal wisdom and stuff in intuitive eating. And I have my own personal history of an eating disorder that intuitive eating was really helpful in recovering from, and then thinking about how this idea of intuition is sort of weaponized or how it can sort of lead down dangerous paths sometimes, right, and make people vulnerable to mis and disinformation. Because this notion of trusting your gut and tuning into your instincts isn't always fail safe, isn't foolproof in every area of life. And, yes, I think in a lot of ways, we could use more intuition and more education on how to tune into our inner voice. And There are all these influencers cautioning people to do just that when their pitch is like, "listen to your gut, don't vaccinate your child," right, or "listen to your gut, don't take this chemotherapy, do this food detox protocol instead," and that's extremely dangerous. So I'm just curious if you have thoughts on some of the nuances of that, on how intuition can be useful in certain areas, what the benefits are of learning to trust your gut versus what some of the pitfalls are that people need to look out for.
Stephanie Alice Baker: You're absolutely correct to observe the emphasis on intuition in the wellness space. You see it across the board. Some of whom presumably believe it to be a great source of wisdom. Others perhaps who are just using similar messaging to promote their brand. But it's risky. Right? And our intuition can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be problematic guide at times. And I think a good lesson here is to look at behavioral economics and say, for example, the work of people like Danny Kahneman. Because so much of the work there is about showing the limits of intuition. Not to say that intuition is bad, or cognition and reflection are good. It's not so reductionist as that. They serve different functions, but it's problematic to use it as a guide. Not least because we can confuse the messaging, and we might think we're following our intuition, but actually be inspired by somebody and use that as a means of basically justifying why we're doing something. Or, for example, in a group setting, we might feel like an ecstatic experience and confuse that for something that it's not.
It is problematic. But, again, it's part of, I think, the bigger way in which a lot of wellness practitioners today promote their brand. And in this regard, I actually think they're stepping away from wellness as certainly Halbert Dunn and the pioneers of the wellness movement in the seventies understood it and actually tapping much more into the healing modalities of the 1800s, 19th century, where there was a big emphasis on Mind Cure and various healing modalities that were very pseudoscientific. So what's interesting is that when you look at wellness today, a lot of it selects different practices and beliefs over the centuries promoting it under this brand of wellness. But this kind of messaging of intuition is actually not even really part of what wellness as a lifestyle was for these founded in the seventies and certainly for Dunn, it just doesn't even get mentioned.To answer your question about navigating it, it's not that it's good or bad. I think all of us can think of times that our intuition has been correct and times that it has led us astray. But It tends to get used now as part of this way of returning to nature, this romanticism about the body and the primal self as distant from Society with a capital S or Industrial Society and institutions and those things, I guess, promoted in a very dualistic way, which I think is unhelpful.
If you look at the scholars who really study this space, most of them wouldn't talk about intuition as being a good guide. Most of them would talk about it as being very useful for quick automated decision making, but actually really problematic in a lot of ways for important decisions. Not really something that should be relevant for the space as a whole.
Christy Harrison: That's really interesting. How does this all tie in with the idea of the death of the expert and the rejection of science and rationality that we see so often in wellness culture?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. So there's a book by Tom Nichols, which you're looking at right now called The Diet of Expertise, which we discovered when we were about halfway through Lifestyle Gurus. It's a wonderful book. If people haven't read it, I'd really recommend it. The Death of Expertise is this idea about the public sentiment rejecting experts and almost feeling as though they have the same degree of expertise say if they were to Google something as somebody who's been studying something for decades. And there are various reasons that in Nichols' book that he traces this moment that we live in as this kind of post-truth moment. Obviously, somebody like Trump is emblematic of this moment. But I think the important thing to say about the death of expertise is it's not really a complete rejection of expertise, which would be indicated by Nichol's book. In the wellness movement and the culture that we see today, it's more about a rejection of institutional expertise.
And so if you look at wellness culture today where you see a suspicion, especially during COVID, of experts. It's often those experts that are seen to be aligned with "the establishment" or institutions because what they really represent, if you look at it symbolically, is power and money. And the the idea that these experts are either compromised by wealth or political interests. So often people would talk about, you know, an expert is funded by such and such a company.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. In the pocket of Big Pharma or Big Food or something like that.
Stephanie Alice Baker: That's it. But if you really look at the what it's the fears are that drive this concern, again, it's a fear about about power and about the economic ways that people are incentivized or compromised. And so that's what you see. Again, I'd wanna qualify it. I think a lot of people turn to popular experts, people who have to go back to your previous question about intuition, they might have bodily wisdom or lived experience. Right? That in itself is a form of expertise. But what they are often critiquing are those people who are seen as part of the establishment as affiliated with institutions and that they're driven essentially, by different interests. It's, yeah, more nuanced than a distrust of expertise in general, but it's really about low trust in institutions. And I think the the key role that it plays in terms of a lot of influencers is that when people distrust the establishment, when people distrust those experts who are affiliated with institutions, then they need to trust somebody. Because we can't be an expert in all these various domains.
And so often, this feeling of low trust ends up resulting in people looking for alternatives and alternative health and wellness gurus and influencers to guide them on these issues. And so you can see the way in which this becomes a very fertile environment for a lot of pseudoscience to emerge.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And for people who are seen as non-institutional experts, right, people who are, like, anti-establishment experts, whether that's a medical doctor who turned to functional medicine or who became anti-vaccine or a naturopath or someone with expertise in alternative medicine or whatever, or just an influencer with lived experience who doesn't necessarily have credentials. But all of that, to me, it kinda feels like that all gets lumped together in this big stew of online influence. So people who are in those camps are kind of seen as credible experts by some people in wellness culture and then anyone who is either working within an institution or even, say, a private practice person, you know, like myself as a private practice dietitian and as someone who writes and speaks publicly and stuff, I sometimes get people saying, "oh, you're just in the pocket of big pharma. You're in the pocket of big food" or whatever. Because I'm critiquing the disordered eating and diet culture stuff that's going against processed food or I'm critiquing anti-vaccine stuff or whatever it is. Right? Even though I don't actually have any interest in those areas and have my own nuanced thoughts on the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry and all that. But I feel like you see this on Twitter, X whatever, and a lot of other social media where it's like, "this person's a shill," and then it's sort of used to try to shut down any argument from them. People are being painted as institutionalists or as corrupted in some way, even when they're not really associated with an institution, but they're just sort of pushing back against some of the pseudoscience that goes on in in wellness culture.
Stephanie Alice Baker: There's a couple of things there. The reality is there is not a dichotomy between experience and expertise in the way that a lot of these influencers would like to promote it. I mean, there is a sense of epistemology as how we know things are the way they are. But if I were to interview people who were affiliated with institutions, many people would be critical of the institutions or organizations that they work for. And you don't have to know many medical practitioners or, in your case, dietitians to realize that it would be a spectrum of views. I think highlighting those nuances actually plays a really important role in overcoming a lot of the polarization that gets promoted online, because many people have overlaps actually as well with people that they wouldn't necessarily think they would sympathize with. I think one of the interesting things about studying this space prior to the pandemic is that, you know, in lifestyle gurus, we were looking at, it was very broad. When we were looking at lifestyle gurus, it was really a synonym in a lot of ways for self-help gurus, in aspects wellness gurus, the people who were trying to sell a lifestyle and improve people's health, wealth, and relationships.
But one of the areas we looked at was wellness, and we looked at people like the Food Babe who were, you know, these online influencers who were very much presenting themselves as a champion of the people and holding organizations to account in these big companies. And, you know, partly, I can be sympathetic with that. Actually, I think a lot of people, when they look at the state of the food industry and the way in which produce varies in different countries and the different incentives. I think a lot of people can be sympathetic and understanding of aspects of why people are critical of these industries and organizations. But it's that often it just gets used to reject any expert or any organization or any institution. And so I actually think that part of the role that we can all play is trying to show the ways that we can relate to different initiatives and different influences even if we don't agree with everything that they're saying. Because I think that the biggest danger in this space, especially after the pandemic, is that when we see so much pseudoscience, we see so much harm.
Anybody who is an influencer in this space and doesn't really have the credentials to be advising people on their diets and their health, we can, with a broad brushstroke, block them into one category. And I think that's just part of the polarization. It just pushes people further away. So much of what I try to do is to really understand where people are coming from, to point out where the limits are with an issue, and to also highlight what seems very valid and reasonable.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Because that's what draws people to those influencers and gurus in the first place, and there's a reason for that. There's a reason people get attracted to those figures.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Christy Harrison: You write that while wellness gurus typically present themselves as anti-establishment, it would be an overstatement to propose that they are anti-science. I thought that was really interesting. Can you explain a little bit why you think that distinction is important, and why we shouldn't be painting with a broad brush that all of these gurus are anti-science?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. So I think if you were to look at maybe the 60 most influential wellness gurus, you would have a really broad group of people, and it could include people who are promoting an anti-vaccination agenda as well as people who are actually promoting very reasonable lifestyles and health advice that would, in many ways, correspond to the mainstream science. When I was highlighting that it would be an error to label wellness influences anti-science. It's because they're not all rejecting science. They're actually not all rejecting medicine. And I think there are many that are aligned with this conception of wellness that Dunn envisaged and that the pioneers also championed in the 1970s that was really about complementing wellness. It wasn't critical of science. It wasn't critical of, you know, the medical establishment.
It just wasn't trying to treat people. It had a different interest and drive, really. It's, again, about seeing the nuances in what these influencers are doing. There's doctors who would label themselves wellness influencers. So it would, in my opinion, be a mistake to only look at the extreme examples. Only look at the kind of straw man and try to reduce every wellness influencer to that, because there are many that advocate for science and we completely write science as we practice it today.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. Well, I think that's one side of the spectrum, and maybe there's another side or part of it that's wellness influencers who are using the language of science when it suits them, when it feels like it's justified or when there is maybe some small study or whatever that seems to, like, support their claims, but rejecting science in other ways. I've noticed there's people who will, in one breath, use these scientific terms and maybe even, like, throw in a study reference or two. But then talk about how, like, science just hasn't caught up yet with this new stuff and that science is behind or whatever and sort of denigrate science in that way. So I think it's an interesting science getting sort of weaponized or science getting used when it serves somebody's interest.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. The selective use of statistics and science in that regard is really much more a sign of the times and how basically we come to form knowledge. So I think you do see a lot of wellness influencers who, for example, will select one study, and it's really overblown. It's used to misrepresent something or to indicate that something is much more valid than it really is. I think it just gets used in more general ways in terms of validating knowledge in the sense that there's obviously been a huge shift since the enlightenment departure from organized religion, and many people turn to science to make sense of the world around them and to understand which facts are real. And so what you do see in the space is influencers using the science of language to try to verify their ideas and their products, and that's where you do see a a huge misuse. So, for example, you'll see terms like "quantum." That's a big one that many people will use, or they'll try to talk about detoxification. Obviously, it's highly debunked, not even regarded as a proper scientific term. Or they'll talk about the microbiome or whatever is fashionable at the time to validate their views.
But aside from the actual language here, it's also a way in a very secular society. And I don't mean secular in the sense. Of course, many people have spiritual beliefs. But secular in the sense that, ou know, you couldn't use religious language broadly and have something accepted by a mass audience. So people will turn to things like statistics to validate mindfulness or meditation, and that's much more accepted in a secular society, especially by institutions. And this is very relevant for wellness because a lot of these wellness modalities have been incorporated in places like the workplace. And so even if it's a religious practice, they will use the language often of statistics and science to verify its benefits.
Christy Harrison: I wanna talk a little bit about how wellness culture has become a gateway into misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, which is something that I've been really interested in myself and seeing unfold since the pandemic. But even before that, that's what's happening. Right? And so I'm curious to hear from you, like, first, what was medical misinformation like before the Internet? And then how did the Internet and social media change the landscape of that?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Medical misinformation obviously existed for thousands of years. I guess the first thing to highlight is that when we often use the terms mis and disinformation, what distinguishes them is intent. So misinformation being false or misleading information that someone genuinely believes to be true. Whereas disinformation is false or misleading Information that is intended to cause harm. So there's a level of deception and intent with disinformation. Misinformation has existed for thousands of years in the sense that people believed they were promoting health when they look at things like the humours, but, obviously, it's false and problematic. I think what you see with the internet, we see various things. I mean, the most obvious would obviously be the way in which people can connect at an unprecedented speed and scale. And what this allows is communities to form online, in broad geographical locations like us. And temporal spheres as well.
But in addition to that, it also provides new opportunities to establish influence online. So most people would only need to have a digital device and access to the internet, in principle, to become an influencer. Obviously, it requires a degree of skill and luck and other talents to really achieve fame online, but the idea is that it's much more accessible for people to try to become an influencer now and to share their opinions and their advice online. And what we also see with the internet are the ways in which these influencer networks operate. So these individuals could really be conceived as powerful nodes in a broader network, which is why often people talk about suspending them, because you can see the network effect that would have. But they don't operate in isolation. So they often operate within highly concentrated networks where they're all promoting one another, and that can work both offline and online. But in terms of your question about how the internet has changed things. It's enabled these networks to establish much more prominence and also to monetize their brands much more easily with things like affiliate marketing schemes and various links. So, yeah, that's new ways of connecting, new ways of being influenced, heightened parasocial relationships.
So we often talk about a parasocial relationship between an influencer or a micro-celebrity and the audience. The term was actually established at the dawn of the television age, but the process is a kind of intense emotional, imaginary relationship that the viewer has with the mediated figure. [This] is intensified online because it's a direct form of communication that they have with those that they follow, as well as much more frequent interaction often. And so that's some of the primary ways that the internet has shaped this space.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. If you can bring someone with you into your bathroom or whatever. Right? You can look at their content when you're standing in line at a grocery store or any time of day or night versus not having access to your doctor except for at scheduled appointments or maybe telehealth visits once in a while in between. It's a very different level of access for sure.
Stephanie Alice Baker: It's the access and the frequency, but it's also the kind of ritualized engagement. So in Lifestyle Gurus, Chris and I looked at the ways in which this parasocial dynamic occurred, you know, like tracing it from talk shows where someone would tune in, say, several times a week in the comfort of their own home and, you know, establishing this parasocial relationship with a talk show host that they probably saw more than their friends and family. But, again, what you get with social media is not just increased frequency. I think the more subtle effect is that often people are viewing this content when they're in their bed, when they're eating, it's these very private, ritualized experiences that feel extremely intimate. And the impression that you have of the influencer that you're following is often one of intimacy as well. So it's this idea that you have backstage access to their lives. We possibly know their family, you might see posts with their pets or what I eat in the day videos. These were all examples that we previously looked at.
If you compare that, say, for example, to the relationship that somebody would have with a celebrity who was sharing their health tips in a magazine that often seems more polished. It seems more distant. Obviously, less frequent, edited, and managed by those people who are producing the content instead of directly shared by the influencer. It creates a subtle but important distinction between the interactions that occurred prior to these online tools.
Christy Harrison: It's really interesting. Going back a little bit to our discussion of anecdotal evidence and personal experience versus expertise and how they're not totally distinct but maybe anecdotal evidence and personal experience versus science and sort of, like, formalized ways. What role do you think anecdotes and personal experience should play in our pursuit of well-being?
Stephanie Alice Baker: They play a very important role even in parts of medicine. So, for example, when you look at people who have allergies, often they will need to share a food diary and go through their experiences. So there is a role there even if you look at the medical context between, say, an allergist and a patient where anecdotes are important. I think when you're looking at the online space, what's crucial to remember is that you can hear somebody's experience, and you can resonate with it much in the same way you would resonate with someone's story in a novel. But that when it comes to to important issues such as health, that there is no way of verifying what you're hearing and that it's important to really remember that. Because I think that, you know, there's so many of these Instagram or self-help therapists, and a lot of what they share online is actually pretty innocuous. But when it's more serious content, I think just remembering that, yes, it can be useful to hear other people's story. Maybe you can bring that story to your medical practitioner. Right? Much the same way that, actually, there's a lot of research where doctors say that it's not that Google is problem necessarily for patients to be using. It's that if they research something, they should bring that as a question, right, rather than assuming that they have the knowledge through searching for something online. And so I'd say in much the same way, it's fine to follow people that you find inspirational or that you seek advice from. But if it's a medical issue, then use that as an example or as a question to ask your doctor.
And, again, I mean, I think there's so much of this issue about anecdote versus expertise really boils down to what it is that we're speaking about. If it's somebody sharing their ritual about drinking water before they eat breakfast, it's fairly mundane and it's ot that problematic. But if it's somebody suggesting something about medication or, you know, something more serious then and that's where, again, I think if something really resonates, bring that to an expert and seek advice. But I think, again, people can go to these realms for different reasons.One thing I found interesting is when I teach a third year module, and so these students are about twenty two. I remember asking them, it was the module I'm teaching right now, but about last year, and I asked them, "how many of you go to your doctor If you just wanna improve your health?" So you don't have something wrong with you, but you just wanna improve your health. And no one put up their hand. Previously, when I was asking questions about health, they all said that they would see their doctor, but they would only see their doctor if something was wrong.
And so I felt like that highlighted what I also observed online, which is that many of these people who follow wellness influencers aren't actually going, unless they brand with regard to a particular medical issue or a problem, often, they seek these guides to improve their life in some way. But then buried in that content can be something more problematic. Or they might jump from one thing to another. Right? Maybe they've got a medical issue, and they don't feel like it's solved, and so they start following people who are advocating certain lifestyles online. And before you know it, getting recommended different content and following more extreme content. That's how it tends to end.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. That's how the algorithm tends to pull people down those rabbit holes too. They go from relatively innocuous stuff to more and more extreme, because that's what keeps people on the platforms. It's what maximizes engagement. And not through any nefarious intent on the part of the platforms, but just because their algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, that's what tends to happen.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. There's that, and there's also a lot of like, to go back to the question you asked before about the impact of the Internet and misinformation, there's also the tendency for collaboration. So the recommended algorithm is a big part of how people are led to more extreme content, but it can, even without the algorithm, often be through people having guests on who would promote more extreme content, and then somebody views somebody and then might go to their channel. And so a lot of it can be through collaborations or shout-outs to other influencers. And this is what I mean about the the networked effect plays such a big role in the spread of mis and disinformation because whether it's intentional or not, these people are often working with like minded individuals, and they will often bring other guests on to enhance their brands and increase their audience reach.
Christy Harrison: And I think the guests that they bring on who have more extreme views probably do better. You know, speaking as someone who's been podcasting for 10 years, I feel like the people who are more strident, those episodes tend to go more viral. Right? I get the sort of pull and the instinct, "oh, let's go over here" where somebody has this very clear, very black and white, sort of shouty way of putting out their content. Like, that's probably gonna do well, actually.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. Definitely. Absolutely. In terms of engagement. But, you know, then there's also, I think for the short term, it works. But for the long term, it's often the the demise of a brand, right. Because there's credibility. We see this happening right now with a lot of the Influencers who were promoting alternative cures during the pandemic. The initial response was a huge degree of fame and celebrity online, But actually now, there's a real loss of credibility around a lot of their brands.
Christy Harrison: Well, this podcast is called Rethinking Wellness, and, you know, I've been asking all my guests, how are you rethinking wellness or how have you rethought wellness in light of your work?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Good question. In many ways, it's what we were talking about at the beginning, which is, I'm much more critical of the space in terms of not just accepting things at face value and definitely looking beneath the surface of what I see online because I'm more aware of the tactics and techniques that influencers use to achieve a degree of legitimacy and credibility. So there's no doubt more discerning of the space. But also understanding, and I think, actually, in a lot of ways, I'm more curious about the direction it will take. Because I think that wellness is this brand and this concept that is being marketed, as I said, to mean so many things, but the desires underpinning it, I think they're unlikely to go anywhere. And so it will be interesting to see how the space continues to evolve, and I think at the front of a lot of these shifts is technology. And so so much of this space will continue to be directed by the technological shifts and the mainstreaming of a lot of these technologies that bring benefits but also problems and unintended consequences. So that's where I'm interested. And, yeah, how's it made me rethink it? I think being more discerning, but at the same time, with a heightened level of curiosity rather than blindly just adopting a lot of these practices.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. That's how I've been feeling a lot lately too. I think I'm maybe a little bit more on the burn it all down side of things than you are, like, on the sort of this is all just such bullshit. But also I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for people who are attracted to those influencers, and I was one of those people myself. I've been attracted to various things because of dealing with chronic illness throughout my life, and I've had to rethink my relationship with wellness many times. So I have a lot of compassion too. I think of myself as a compassionate skeptic. Like, I'm very giving a side eye to a lot that shows up in wellness culture. But I also have compassion for why people get pulled into it because I did myself, and there are still things in wellness culture that I value and want to hold on to and don't wanna just tear the whole thing down. I think especially with online influencers and gurus and stuff, I tend to look very skeptically at those things.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. The problem I think there is that people always look for guides. And so I share very much, I mean I love the way you describe your stance. But I don't see this changing in terms of people looking for role models and and wisdom and direction. This is where it's been useful as a sociologist because you have this rich theoretical knowledge that actually talks about a lot of these concerns, but they just didn't predict it would emanate in this way. And I think the more liberal society we live in, the more, unfortunately for better or worse, we will have various influencers. Some of whom do offer useful advice, but, yeah, some which are seriously problematic.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. So you don't feel like there's any putting the genie back in the bottle at this point? We're in a world where influencers have influence and drive a lot of people's and where institutions have really taken a hit in terms of trust. Do you see any way forward that is sort of shifting that balance, or do you think influencers are here to stay and so maybe there just needs to be more regulation on what they're allowed to say and do? What do you see as sort of the future of this space?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Well, there's two aspects. I think the question about institutions and trust, I'll answer first. I don't know which direction it will go, but I do think there is the capacity for institutions to earn people's trust. I think what that takes is a serious interrogation about why people feel low trust, which actually, if you look at research, has really been in decline since the fifties. So it's not, despite what many people see in the media, or just this recent shift. It has been an issue that has been in decline since the post-war period. I think that's the first thing. I wouldn't know which way I would go, but I think the way to restore trust is to look at why we live in a low trust society and look at ways to earn it. And, of course, trust is easily broken. But I think there are ways to earn, and there are countries where there are higher levels of trust.
With regard to the influencers, I think whether they're termed influencers or not, if you look at posttraditional liberal society and, you know, it's very much what we live in, we will have some form of influencer or celebrity that people aspire to be like. Because in many ways, these figures replace the authority that religious figures once held. And people, you know, there's just these perennial questions and longings that people have and people seek guidance. And so if you have a more authoritarian society where people have this prescribed way of living, where you have a very coherent religious society, I can imagine a society where there wouldn't be influencers or celebrities. But in a post-traditional society where we don't have those scripts and there's much more freedom for people to choose how they want to live and there's a loosening of moral authority, then there becomes so many unanswered questions and people are always living in this state of what a very famous sociologist called Anthony Giddens termed ontological insecurity, where they're always unsure. Right? Am I pursuing the right career? Am I partnering with the right person? Am I living my best life? Because we have so much freedom, we have so many questions constantly about how we're living and whether we're living, you know, "our best life" or becoming "our best self." And feeding many of those insecurities and doubts is the society that we live in, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's more free, but people will emerge, whether it's a celebrity or a politician or an influencer, to respond to people and to try to ease their anxieties and offer guidance and direction. And that's why I don't see these influential figures going anywhere. We might have more regulation, but there will be figures that profess to know the meaning of life and to offer to give people guidance and purpose and meaning, because in a society like ours, there's a kind of loosening of authority and those questions don't go away.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, and I think that parallels a lot of what I've seen and heard from people in my research too of this lack of a moral center, a moral compass, or someone whose authority you can really trust and respect and rely on and not have to question and these other things. Like, in the absence of that, when we're left to our own devices to figure out what's the best life, as you say, you know, how to live your best life. That's just an endless quest for optimization and an endless need for sort of resources to do that.
Stephanie Alice Baker: And anxiety for a lot of people. Like, they've had those experiments where if you give people six options for jams instead of three, people just constantly doubt themselves and so inability to to decide. And so the source of this situation that we're in is actually not a bad thing. It's a lot of freedom. But there's a huge amount of insecurity that accompanies this, and we see it across these realms of health, wealth, and relationships.
Christy Harrison: Well, on that happy note, I wanna thank you so much for being here and sharing all that you did. Can you tell people where they can find your book and learn more about you online?
Stephanie Alice Baker: Yeah. Sure. So if you Google me. You'll see my institutional web page. And my books, they're available on, obviously, places like Amazon, but a lot of independent bookstores as well. Wellness Culture, Lifestyle Gurus, and another book coming out next year.
Christy Harrison: Which is about cults, right? It sounds really interesting too.
Stephanie Alice Baker: It is. It is. I can't say too much, and it's coauthored. There are two other authors, but it's an extension in a lot of ways of what we saw during the pandemic. Yes. Publishing is a very long process as you know.
Christy Harrison: Oh, yes.
Stephanie Alice Baker: So it's finished. It's been submitted, but it won't be out until next year.
Christy Harrison: Well, really looking forward to that. And in the meantime, to having people read your other books. We'll put links to those in the show notes. And thank you again so much for being here. This was a pleasure.
Stephanie Alice Baker: Thank you for having me.
Christy Harrison: So that's our show. Thanks to our guest for being here and to you for listening. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. You can also support us by becoming a paid subscriber for just a few bucks a month on Substack. With a paid subscription, you unlock great perks like bonus episodes, subscriber-only q and a's, and much more. Sign up now at rethinkingwellness.substack.com. That's "rethinking wellness dot substack dot com." Got burning questions about wellness trends, diet fads, or anything else we cover on the show? Send them my way at christyharrison.com/questions for a chance to have them answered on an upcoming episode.
And if you're looking to heal your relationship with food and break free from diet and wellness culture. I'd love for you to check out my online course Intuitive Eating Fundamentals. You can learn more and enroll now at christyharrison.com/course. Rethinking wellness is produced and edited by Softer Sounds podcast studio. Julianne Wotasik does our website production. Our album art was created by Tara Jacoby. Theme song was written and performed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
And I'm your host and executive producer, Christy Harrison. Thanks again for listening, and take care.
How Wellness Culture and Lifestyle Gurus Spread Misinformation with Stephanie Alice Baker