I don't know exactly when we went from following interesting people on the internet to contemplating catalogs of offers with legs, but it was quite evident that it couldn't last forever.
For years, the figure of the influencer was sold to us as a communication revolution. Apparently normal people capable of connecting with thousands or millions of followers without needing a television, a magazine, or a production company behind them.
And it worked. Precisely because they seemed normal. Until they stopped seeming so.
The problem began when some accounts stopped having advertising to become directly advertising with an Instagram account.
Today someone recommends the shampoo that has coincidentally changed their life. Tomorrow they discover absolutely revolutionary vitamins. The day after tomorrow they find the definitive mattress. On Thursday the serum they had been looking for since they left the womb appears, and on Friday they explain that they had never tried such croquettes.
An existence full of revelations. All with a discount code.
And it seems the public is starting to get tired.
A recently released survey indicates that 69.8% consider that influencers abuse hidden advertising, while 61.9% perceive their publications as mostly promotional.
Well, man, Sherlock Holmes wasn't needed either.
When someone goes from telling you about their life to trying to sell you five products before breakfast, maybe you start to suspect that that wonderful relationship of closeness had a lot more marketing department than it seemed.
But there is another element that has always fascinated me about this phenomenon: the nonsense.
Because alongside creators with a lot of talent - and there are and it would be absurd to put them all in the same bag - we have elevated to the category of celebrity people whose extraordinary merit consisted of showing us what they had for breakfast, opening packages in front of a camera, recording themselves entering a hotel, or explaining to us for twelve minutes how they had organized a drawer.
And millions of people watching. I must admit that as a sociological experiment it has merit.
The problem is that some started by showing us their closet and ended up opining on economics, nutrition, politics, romantic relationships, psychology, and practically
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any subject that appeared between two commercial collaborations. All with wonderful confidence.
One can consult documents, cross-reference sources, and still have doubts before writing about certain matters. Then someone appears from a sun lounger in Bali explaining how you should organize your household economy because they just discovered an app about forty minutes ago. Fantastic.
The problem is not that someone makes money creating content. It is a perfectly legitimate job.
The problem arises when fame is confused with authority, followers with knowledge, and the ability to generate visits with necessarily having something interesting to say. And for too long we have confused the three things.
When the nonsense stops being funny
But there is a line where all this stops being simply ridiculous to me: health.
Because there were those who apparently interpreted that reaching a certain number of followers automatically unlocked a Medical degree.
And the advice on diets, supplements, mental health, treatments, hormones, dermatological problems, and miracle products began. Here we are no longer talking about the dress you bought or the restaurant you liked. Here we are talking about things that can have consequences.
The General Medical Council itself launched the #noteenREDES campaign in 2026, aimed especially at young people, to warn about pseudotherapies, diets without scientific evidence, false mental health treatments, and miracle products spread on social media.
There are studies that amply justify that concern. An article published in The BMJ collects studies on supplements promoted by influencers in which approximately two-thirds of the recommended doses exceeded national safety recommendations and 7% even exceeded the maximum limits considered safe by the European authority.
Then the little joke changes quite a bit.
Because it is one thing to convince me to buy a cream that does absolutely nothing, and another for someone to make decisions related to their health because a person with two million followers assured in front of a camera that "it works for me."
Oh, well. Close the Faculty of Medicine, we have a forty-second reel.
Having followers means many people listen to you. It does not mean you know what you are talking about.
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You can have three million followers and still say something outrageous. The only difference is that now you have three million opportunities for that outrageousness to cause harm.
The shopping channel disguised as friendship
There is also a transparency problem.
In an international analysis in which the Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs participated, only one out of every five influencers studied systematically identified the commercial content they published correctly.
So the feeling of watching a shopping channel camouflaged as everyday life did not exactly appear spontaneously.
The traditional influencer sold something much more powerful than any product: closeness. "I'm like you." That was the real product.
Until "I'm like you" started speaking from luxury hotels, sponsored trips, and exclusive events while recommending twenty different things every week.
And then a rather uncomfortable question arose: Are you telling me your life or selling me one?
When the public starts asking themselves that question, the spell is broken.
In fact, we have reached a wonderful irony: the growth of so-called de-influencing, creators who gain an audience by recommending not to buy certain products or by denouncing the compulsive consumption generated by social media.
We invented the influencer to tell us what to buy and now we need another influencer to tell us what not to buy. Capitalism has managed to commercialize even the antidote.
However, I don't think we are witnessing the influencer apocalypse either.
The sector continues to move a lot of money and brands are still interested in these profiles. IAB Spain data also shows an interesting paradox: brand views on social media are increasing while general interactions are decreasing in a scenario of enormous content saturation.
That is why perhaps we are not facing a disappearance. We are facing something much more interesting: digital natural selection.
Those who contribute talent, knowledge, humor, creativity, entertainment, or a community that truly trusts them will continue to succeed.
And those who built an entire career on taking a photo, opening a package, and hoping the algorithm would work its magic will have more difficulties.
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And I think that's perfectly logical. Because no bubble can grow indefinitely.
For too long we have turned the number of followers into a kind of universal certificate of prestige. If someone had a million followers, it seemed that we automatically had to listen to what they thought about anything.
Well, no.
A million people can follow you because you are hilarious. That doesn't make you a nutritionist. You can be magnificent at makeup. That doesn't make you a psychologist. You can have an extraordinary ability to create content. That doesn't make you a doctor, an economist, a political scientist, or an expert in absolutely everything.
And recognizing it doesn't discredit the work of good creators either. On the contrary: it allows us to distinguish those who truly build quality content from those who simply learned to exploit an algorithm.
The internet achieved something extraordinary: it democratized the possibility of having a voice. What it never promised is that all voices necessarily had something to say. Perhaps the public is simply starting to remember that.
And if that means the bubble is finally starting to pop, I'm not going to pretend to be surprised either.
What was surprising was that it took so long to meet the pin.
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