The Great Wellness Grift

By Kavisha Pillay

Wellness was once a personal pursuit. You took your vitamins, tried to eat well, maybe walked a bit more than usual. These days, wellness is a production which is live-streamed, monetised, and hashtagged. In the digital economy, being well is no longer just about feeling good, it’s about performing it convincingly.

On social media, you will find trends that encourage you to “sun-charge” your water, or “mouth-tape” to boost sleep quality, as well as touts for “sea moss smoothies” to cure everything from bloating to heartbreak. If you’re wondering if this is all parody, it’s not. It’s a growing corner of a global wellness economy now worth over $6 trillion per annum.

The modern wellness industry is a strange place. Take the “parasite cleanse” community (yes, that’s a real thing), where people post photos of what they’ve expelled, claiming that they’ve rid themselves of years worth of invisible invaders. The “raw meat influencers” are eating uncooked meat on camera to “restore primal masculinity”. And some influencers are still punting “crystal-charged vaginal eggs”, despite the health warnings. 

For this reason, the Campaign On Digital Ethics (CODE), launched a provocative new satirical series titled The Grifty Gang, which takes aim at this very phenomenon. Episode one introduces us to Grifftany, a wellness influencer selling soul detox elixir. She promises weight loss, chakra clearing, and clarity for a $200 bottle. No science required, just vibes. 

Watch it here. 

But, while it’s fun to mock these trends, it’s more important to ask why they are flourishing. 

People may be looking for control in a world that often feels out of it. The climate is collapsing, economies are teetering, and healthcare systems are either overstretched or out of reach, and Big Pharma is increasingly exploitative. Under these conditions, the appeal of DIY health becomes easier to understand. When state institutions fail to provide access to quality health care services, people turn to charismatic figures who promise answers, which are often simplified, beautifully packaged, and just plausible enough to sound true.

The real power of the wellness influencer is not their expertise and experience in the practice of medicine, but their relatability. They’re not doctors in white coats, they’re often barefoot, green-juice-drinking, soft-spoken guides who say, “I’ve been where you are.” They offer not only ‘advice’, but identity and community, one that feels more human than the bureaucratic coldness of formal healthcare systems. 

But that search for community is being capitalised on, at scale.

What complicates matters further is the structure of social media itself. Platforms don’t reward credibility, they reward engagement. The bolder the claim, the better the reach. The more aesthetic the post, the more likely it is to trend. “Boost your immunity in three days” spreads faster than “Talk to your GP.” Combine that with monetisation schemes and product sponsorships, and suddenly, influencers have a financial stake in keeping their audiences sold, and also sceptical of anything that might contradict them in order to create a market for quackery. 

The consequences can be serious. During the COVID-19 pandemic, health misinformation surged, often under the guise of wellness. From bleach gargles to immunity teas and anti-vaxx content masked as “natural health advocacy,” many influencers became de facto public health authorities, with little regard for evidence. The ripple effects included delayed treatment, increased vaccine hesitancy, and growing public distrust in public health care services and medicine.

At CODE, we’re not interested in shaming people for seeking better health or for embracing indigenous or traditional medicine. That instinct is human, even hopeful. But we are concerned about how digital platforms, and the industries that flourish on them, exploit that instinct for profit.

The problem isn’t that people are looking for answers. It’s that they’re being offered too many bad and even dangerous ones from people who profit when we’re confused, anxious, and endlessly scrolling for quick-fixes to our health problems.

Wellness shouldn’t be a performance. What’s needed is access to real healthcare, quality public health systems, and a health-seeking culture that doesn’t treat every personal struggle as a branding opportunity.

At its core, wellness should empower and not exploit. Until the digital economy learns the difference, the healthiest choice that we can make is to stay informed, ask hard questions, and resist buying into unproven fads.