Emmet Rushes explains why health and fitness social media 'influencers' are the 'ultimate con artists'.

The blogging world was thrown into turmoil this year.

Social media, make up, fashion and fitness ‘influencers’ were shown to be taking ‘liberties’ when it came to their posts and appearance.

2 sites started to ‘call out’ some of the top influencers in Ireland on how they were misleading the public and their followers and it did not go down well.

Bloggers Unveiled and Fit-Fam Failures took it upon themselves to highlight just how fake social media was.

Some of these ‘influencers’ were using all manner of tricks and scams in order to make their ‘influence’ go further and to help themselves and their businesses.

While there is merit in what the 2 sites were doing, some did not see it that way and it reached a boiling point over the past month.

The bloggers and influencers who were being called out by Bloggers Unveiled (BU), were hell bent on finding out who she was.

In their eyes, this person was unjustifiably harming their profiles and their businesses, and she deserved to be stopped.

Threats were being made to BU and this eventually caused her to close down the site due to the pressure.

Fit-Fam Failures was centred on the fitness scene in Ireland and was also highlighting some of the dodgy practices the influencers were using to amass fans and use this to leverage and grow their influence and their businesses.

It too closed this week, but there was no explanation for this.

Both sites were being accused of being set up for nothing more than bullying, and when you looked at some of their posts, you could see that they were starting to give their opinion on people in some posts, rather than keeping it to what both sites were set up for, calling out the fakeness of the social media and blogging scene in Ireland.

But that aside, what both sites did do, and did very well, was to highlight the unethical practices of some of the top businesses, influencers and pages in the blogging scene in Ireland.

Now while there are many bloggers and influencers who are genuine and who apply ASAI standards to their collaborations, there are more who chance their arms daily.

These people thought nothing of manipulating, misleading and lying to their loyal followers, customers and fans.

They are rejoicing at the fact that both sites are gone and why wouldn’t they?

They now have free reign to keep doing what they were doing in order to line their own pockets with their unethical practices.

You may not think that this is a big deal and it’s not an issue worth talking about, but you would be wrong.

You would be very wrong.

Social media influencers are being used more and more by larger companies to promote their products.

From my perspective, when it comes to fitness and health, these people are the ultimate con artists.

They promote themselves as being there to help you to achieve your goals and yet they are using everything they can to make themselves look nothing like they really do.

You are following what they do, trying to eat and train like they do, in the hopes of ending up looking like they do, but at the same time, they are buying flowers and likes (some had 75% fake followers), using photoshop, filters, and performance enhancing drugs, (yes, even the females).

You are not being given a true reflection of what is achievable.

You end up feeling worse about yourself and wondering why everything you are doing isn’t working.

These people were caught out.

They were shown to be complete hypocrites and they are now happy that the two sites are gone.

OF COURSE, THEY ARE HAPPY!

They can now go back to misleading you, your children and everyone else.

I mention your children because these fakes are who your children are growing up to aspire to be.

If the norm is to use drugs, or photoshop, do you honestly think they won’t turn to them to ‘look’ like the people they admire?

You would be very foolish to think that they wouldn’t.

The fitness industry at the moment is regulated badly enough, but with social media giving rise to unqualified idiots selling training plans and meal plans, giving advice on nutrition, releasing diet books to people who are easily influenced into buying them, while lying and misleading at the same time, things are reaching an extremely worrying point.

Do not be fooled that you are immune to this.

We have all been victim to trying or buying into some thing because of the weight of the person selling it.

But when it is getting to the point where everything seems to be a lie, we have to wonder when reality will bite back.