Renne Nunes

You do not need to be a specialist to be influential. You only need to be recognizable. That was Michel Alcoforado’s provocation when he pointed out that influencers do not speak to everyone; they speak to a small group that sees itself in them, recognizes itself in them, finds rest in them. Influence, in this sense, does not arise from the classical authority of knowledge but from intimacy built through repetition, daily exposure, and the feeling of proximity. It is not knowledge that persuades; it is the bond.

The numbers merely confirm what we already sensed with a tired thumb scrolling the screen: a large portion of our daily decisions is made based on the opinion of someone we have never met personally but who seems to know us very well. We trust because we feel seen. Because someone names what we feel, organizes chaos into three bullet points, offers a routine, a tip, a possible answer. Thinking requires effort. Delegating brings relief.

There is, however, something unsettling about this economy of trust. The more complex life becomes, the more we crave shortcuts. The more ambiguous the world feels, the more we seek ready-made certainties. Influence thrives precisely there: where doubt is uncomfortable, where choice feels heavy, where sustaining a question demands time, silence, and frustration. The influencer emerges as an elegant operator of cognitive relief, someone who chooses for us, thinks for us, decides for us, while we continue believing we are exercising autonomy.

When this mechanism operates in the field of consumption, its effects are usually relatively harmless: one product disappoints, another satisfies, life goes on. But when the same model shifts into territories such as physical and mental health, the scale changes. It is no longer about taste, style, or preference. It is about suffering, the body, subjectivity. And perhaps it is precisely there that the question must be raised, not to condemn those who speak, but to interrogate why we are so willing not to think.

Influence is not fame, it is proximity

Contemporary influence should not be confused with fame, nor does it depend on large audiences. It operates on a smaller, more intimate scale, often invisible to those outside the community. An influencer is influential to those who follow them, who recognize their tone, their language, their way of framing the world. This dynamic helps explain why expertise and influence do not necessarily go hand in hand. What secures adherence is not merely the content itself, but the feeling that something was said “for me,” from a place that feels close, almost domestic.

This proximity is not built through titles, certificates, or years of experience, but through repeated presence. It is manufactured in everyday life turned into narrative, in intimacy shared in calculated doses, in the confessional tone, in vulnerabilities carefully edited, in the aesthetic of authenticity. The influencer appears as someone standing beside you, not speaking from a pulpit. They do not return questions. They do not linger in ambiguity. They do not get lost in nuance. They offer a ready-to-use synthesis. In a world saturated with information, this is not a flaw. It is an asset.

Perhaps that is why influence grows precisely where complexity increases. The more decisions life demands, the more comfortable it feels to follow someone who has already decided. Influence rarely imposes itself overtly; it suggests, welcomes, draws near, creates belonging. And without sounding authoritarian, it gradually shifts the center of gravity: what once required reflection and choice becomes a movement of adherence and repetition. There is no need to assume collective naïveté. It is simpler, and more uncomfortable, to acknowledge fatigue: thinking requires time, energy, and tolerance for doubt, and many of us prefer to conserve that effort when the world already feels too heavy.

Numbers that think for us

The data help measure the phenomenon, but above all they expose its central contradiction. Research by Youpix in partnership with Nielsen indicates that more than two-thirds of Brazilian consumers say they are tired of the excess of advertising by influencers. Even so, around 80 percent admit they have purchased a product recommended by one. Fatigue does not prevent adherence. On the contrary, it seems to make it even more automatic.

This is not inconsistency or statistical naïveté. It reflects a well-known psychological dynamic. When we are saturated with stimuli, we seek shortcuts. When options are excessive, choosing becomes burdensome. In this context, personalized recommendations function as relief. It is not merely advertising. It is someone filtering the world for us. Someone deciding what matters. Someone sparing us the effort.

Another figure deserves special attention. A significant portion of consumers report feeling safer when using products recommended by influencers. The word is safety. Not desire, not curiosity, not impulse. Safety. Following someone reduces the anxiety of individual choice. If the experience is frustrating, the mistake is not entirely mine. The decision was not solitary. Responsibility diffuses. Risk is shared. Or, more precisely, transferred.

There is yet another revealing element. Many consumers remember the influencer more than the brand being advertised. The product loses centrality. The bond remains. This completely shifts the logic of persuasion. It is no longer about convincing through argument, but about sustaining a continuous presence that inspires trust. Authority comes not from what is said, but from who says it. Not from content, but from familiarity.

When examined carefully, these numbers say less about consumption and more about thought itself. They reveal how willing we are to delegate decisions, outsource criteria, and suspend critical judgment in the name of comfort. Influence does not thrive despite fatigue. It thrives because of it. Amid information overload, letting someone think for us can sound like relief, efficiency, time saved. The sensitive point emerges when that relief stops being occasional and begins organizing not only what we buy, but how we care for our bodies, our minds, and our lives.

Success as symbolic credential

In the economy of influence, success functions as an informal certificate of authority. There is no need to claim expertise. It is enough to display victory. The well-lit apartment, the newly purchased car, the disciplined body, the productive routine, the ever-smiling child. All of this composes a silent but effective narrative. If life worked out, the method must work. And if it worked for someone, why would it not work for everyone?

This reasoning, though seductive, is dangerously simplistic. It turns singular trajectories into universal models and converts contingencies into formulas. Success ceases to be the result of multiple variables and becomes proof of general competence. It no longer matters what was studied, how long it took, or what mediations were necessary. What matters is the visible outcome. Authority is built less on process than on display.

Here a curious inversion appears. Education, with its slowness, doubts, and impasses, loses symbolic value. It takes time. It does not photograph well. It does not fit neatly into stories. Performed success, by contrast, is instantaneous, visually convincing, and easily replicated as promise. The résumé leaves books, processes, and accumulated experiences and relocates to the feed.

This logic does not stop at consumption or lifestyle. It advances into more delicate domains such as self-care, existential decisions, and mental health. Whoever appears well becomes automatically authorized to teach how to get there. An organized life becomes argument. Displayed well-being becomes evidence. It hardly matters whether what is shown is curated, edited, or privileged. The image persuades more than reflection.

The effect is subtle yet profound. Success begins to outweigh thought. Performance outweighs elaboration. People are followed not because they problematize, but because they embody a promise, a promise that life can be simplified, optimized, resolved in clear stages. In a world exhausted by complexity, visible success functions as a ready-made answer. And ready-made answers, as we know, dispense with questions.

Why influence thrives where thinking fails

Thinking is not merely an intellectual act; it is psychological labor. It requires sustaining doubt, tolerating contradiction, postponing conclusions, and accepting that reality rarely fits into quick explanations. Thinking disorganizes before reorganizing. In a constantly accelerating environment, this work becomes costly. Influence finds fertile ground there: it promises cognitive economy, packages the world, delivers ready-made choices, reduces the internal friction that accompanies any real decision.

Byung-Chul Han offers an important key to understanding why closed discourses circulate more easily than complex reflections. In a culture oriented toward performance and positivity, the negativity of not knowing, of error, of hesitation, of limits loses value. Doubt becomes inefficiency. Nuance becomes dispersion. Silence becomes absence. The discourse that prevails is affirmative, confident, conclusive. Certainty soothes. Complexity exhausts. Influence thrives because it speaks the language of relief.

In mental health, this dynamic produces a particular effect. What requires opacity, time, and elaboration is converted into quick content, inspirational narratives, and replicable solutions. Much is said about feelings, but little is elaborated. Much is exposed, but little is listened to. The risk lies not in speaking about suffering, but in treating it as something that must be immediately translated into guidance, as if pain were a technical problem and subjectivity a project of optimization.

Resonance without reflection

One reason influence is so effective lies not in the strength of its argument but in its capacity to produce echo. We trust those who make something vibrate within us, who seem to name a diffuse feeling, organize a discomfort that had not yet taken form. Hartmut Rosa’s concept of resonance helps illuminate this dynamic: resonance is an affective response, not a rational verification. Something calls to me, I respond, something moves within me. That is deeply human.

The problem arises when resonance replaces reflection, when what touches us becomes sufficient criterion for truth, correctness, and care. On social media, resonance is amplified and accelerated. A well-crafted personal story, a calibrated confession, a carefully timed narrative of overcoming produces immediate identification. Not necessarily because it is false, but because it is effective: it bypasses defenses, shortens mediation, and creates the sensation that someone has finally said what I have always felt. Trust installs itself before thought has time to arrive.

Recently, I came across an influencer who presented herself as a psychoanalyst and announced a “free consultation” for her followers on social media. She promised decisive guidance that would resolve much of their difficulty, while noting that in her office the fee would be different. I will not mention names because the issue is structural, not personal. The advice itself was simplistic, the kind that would fit easily into a hurried self-help booklet. What stood out most, however, was the posture: overly confident, overly assertive, faintly condescending, as if human complexity were merely an execution error. The implicit message was disciplinary: follow exactly what I say and you will improve; if you do not improve, you did not do it properly. In such promises, singularity disappears. History, limits, and context are compressed to fit the formula. Care becomes performance. Listening becomes optional.

That is where resonance reveals its blind spot. What resonates does not necessarily understand. What moves us emotionally does not necessarily listen. Resonance creates adhesion but does not guarantee elaboration; it brings closer but does not differentiate. When being touched is confused with being cared for, prescriptions proliferate that comfort in the short term while impoverishing in the long term, precisely because they dispense with what suffering demands: time, mediation, difference, responsibility.

Experience is not universality

One of the most recurring arguments in the universe of influence is also one of the weakest: it worked for me, so it can work for you. Personal experience is presented as sufficient proof; lived experience becomes credential; testimony becomes criterion. What begins as sharing ends as prescription, often without acknowledgment of the logical leap involved. Experience begins speaking in the name of the universal as if this were natural.

Edgar Morin reminds us that complex thinking requires recognizing that the same phenomenon can produce radically different effects depending on the subject, context, and relationships involved. Turning experience into rule is both an intellectual and ethical impoverishment because it erases singularities and reduces the other to a case that fits the mold. In mental health, this erasure is particularly dangerous: suffering does not automatically qualify someone to guide another’s suffering; having gone through crisis does not equal sustaining another’s crisis.

Donald Winnicott offers a decisive counterpoint. Trust is not built by invading the other with ready-made answers, but by providing a space in which something can emerge without being immediately colonized by formulas. When experience becomes manual, that space closes. The subject is no longer listened to but framed, and guidance becomes a rushed substitute for elaboration.

When influence stops being harmless

There is a crucial difference between influencing consumption choices and influencing ways of caring for body and mind. In the first case, damage tends to be limited; in the second, it can be profound. To guide is not to accompany. To recommend is not to sustain consequences. Influence operates through reach and immediate impact; care demands ongoing responsibility, sustained listening, and willingness to deal with unforeseen effects, including when there is no quick solution.

Christophe Dejours helps clarify how normative discourses about suffering tend to individualize what is often structural, relational, and historical. The logic of the quick tip frequently personalizes distress excessively: adjust your routine, change your mindset, organize better, think positive. These suggestions are not necessarily false, but they are often insufficient. And insufficiency presented as solution generates cruelty because it produces guilt. If you did not improve, the problem is you. If you did not succeed, you lacked discipline. If you failed, you executed incorrectly.

There is also an ethical dimension frequently left out when care becomes content. Those who influence rarely answer for consequences. Those who recommend do not accompany. Those who guide do not sustain unfolding effects. The logic of reach replaces the logic of responsibility. The bond may feel intense, but it is asymmetrical and ephemeral. That is why questions about training, specialization, and limits are not mere corporatism. They are questions about accountability, about recognizing what one does not know, and about refusing to turn the unknown into merchandise.

Epilogue for those who prefer not to think

There is something deeply reassuring about those who seem free of doubt. Certainty organizes, promises order, offers direction in an unstable world. On social media, certainty appears in irresistible formulas: lose weight in thirty days, learn English in three months, follow twenty steps to success, achieve financial freedom, attain inner peace. The promises vary, but the structure remains the same: a complex problem reduced to a numbered, executable, marketable script. Life becomes project. Suffering becomes technical obstacle.

The comfort of this aesthetic is obvious, and precisely for that reason it deserves suspicion. It sells predictability and, with it, a silent morality: if the method is good and the guide trustworthy, failure must be individual. Certainty protects the discourse and isolates the subject. When the promise fails, blame falls on those who did not follow correctly, did not apply the method properly, did not discipline themselves enough. The method remains intact; human experience becomes execution error.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of contemporary influence is not selling products or lifestyles but offering exemption: exemption from choosing, from sustaining questions, from enduring uncertainty. Obedience here is not imposed; it is voluntary and comfortable. In an exhausted world, following feels almost like self-preservation. Yet the ethical question begins precisely when this cognitive economy ceases to be a tool and becomes a way of being, when thought is outsourced by default and the question is occupied before it even forms.

This is not about demonizing those who speak or share experience. It is about distrusting excessive comfort, especially when it presents itself as care. It is about asking who benefits when you relinquish elaboration, when you reduce your history to a method and your pain to a checklist. Thinking is inefficient, slow, and offers no guarantees. Yet it may still be the only way not to hand over to someone else what no one can do for us without violence: to choose, to sustain doubt, to assume the risk of uncertainty. Life does not come in steps. And ethics begins where scripts fail.

References

Alcoforado, Michel. (2026). É preciso ser especialista para ser influente? Podcast. Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5bDTY5ms36ubVoHJlQaZoL

Dejours, Christophe. (2007). Subjectivity, work and action. Routledge.

Han, Byung-Chul. (2015). The burnout society. Polity Press.

Han, Byung-Chul. (2017). Transparency society. Stanford University Press.

Han, Byung-Chul. (2018). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power. Verso.

Morin, Edgar. (2008). On complexity. Hampton Press.

Morin, Edgar. (2014). Teaching to live: Manifesto for changing education. Bloomsbury.

Rosa, Hartmut. (2019). Resonance: A sociology of our relationship to the world. Polity Press.

Winnicott, Donald W.. (1971). Playing and reality. Tavistock.

Youpix & Nielsen. (2025). Influência: 80% dos consumidores compram produtos sugeridos por creators. Meio & Mensagem.
https://www.meioemensagem.com.br/marketing/influencia-80-dos-consumidores-compram-produtos-sugeridos-por-creators