💧 Wellness influencers and ethics in times of crisis

Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up news, culture, and independent journalism about the psychedelic underground straight to your inbox.

Today is another special edition of The Drop In. Instead of our usual mix of bite-sized news and content from DB’s brilliant archive, we’re dedicating this newsletter to a deeper issue: how the wellness industrial complex 🤝 capitalism shapes influencing during a crisis. You can find this juicy story below!

If you’re looking for ways to help provide relief to those impacted by the fires, check out our LA fire resource page. 

Solidarity 🫶🏽,

Mary Carreón
Senior Editor

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Wellness Influencers Leverage LA’s Wildfires to Turn Profits

Hoping to turn tragedy into sales, some wellness influencers face backlash for using the recent fires to sell products, raising questions about the ethics of influencing during a crisis.

The wellness industrial complex knows no bounds. Over the past two weeks, numerous wellness influencers have pivoted their marketing strategies to leverage the mega-fires in LA as a sales hook to sell supplements, detoxes, and even raw milk.

Mallory DeMille, a correspondent on the Conspirituality podcast and content creator, brought awareness to this issue in a recent IG reel. The post spotlights a handful of influencers peddling health remedies to fire survivors in glaring attempts to profit from them. Mallory told The Cut that wellness influencers wasted no time leveraging the crisis as a sales opportunity, jumping in as soon as the flames began.

The reel garnered over 200,000 views, 8,395 likes, and 400 comments, with dozens voicing outrage at influencers for exploiting tragedy.

“I’m in LA, the fires are not even out yet, and NO ONE NEEDS THIS,” @jesshopperpole writes in a comment on the post. “My god. What absolute ghouls.”

“There are so many people donating whatever they have and sharing with others now, not upselling 💩,” @elenakulikovastudio commented. “If they’re such believers in their snake oil bs why not offer it for free with those in need? ❤️‍🩹”

Of course, many commenters (read: offended wellness influencers) defended selling products to those impacted by the wildfires. One woman even threatened to fight Mallory and her followers IRL for “shaming” people who took this approach.

Drama aside, Mallory’s reel raises a sharp question about the ethics of influencing: Is it ever appropriate to use tragedies — like wildfires, hurricanes, illness, or earthquakes — to make sales? 

“A lot of these creators are being unobservant and uninformed,” says Mikaela de la Myco, a content creator, folk herbalist, educator, and community organizer, to DoubleBlind. “When folks are in crisis, we ask, ‘What do you need? How can we help?’ And the need should inform the actions we take as helpers. These [influencers] are folks with gimmicks hoping to apply their gimmick to an environmental disaster and are clearly unaware of how offensive and selfish these actions are.”

Amorinda Martinez, a curandera (or medicine facilitator) who observed the recent wave of influencers attempting to sell products to fire victims, tells Doubleblind that spiritual and wellness communities have a duty to show up for those affected by the fires and not advance their selfish agendas. “This is a critical and sensitive time for many, filled with deep grief,” she says. “We must show up for humanity — supporting our neighbors, friends, and family without ego gratification or personal gain.”

Leveraging catastrophe is nothing new. Unscrupulous characters often emerge after disasters to profit off of vulnerable populations. We saw it happen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Florence. It happened at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and after the 9/11 attacks, too. Derek Beres, author and co-founder of the Conspirituality podcast, points to Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, as an example of how prevalent this phenomenon is.

“The LA wildfires have kicked off a sort of quack doctrine: Wellness influencers capitalizing on tragedy by selling untested and unregulated supplements, [through the guise] of ‘care,’” Beres tells DoubleBlind. “If they really cared, they would be sharing links to charities on the ground working hard to help people, or, for those LA-based influencers hawking [supplements and detoxes], head to one of the food or clothing drives spread throughout the city and donate their time. But that’s not what they’re doing.”

Sophia Avramides is working with a group of herbalists in Los Angeles to launch the LA Fire Herbal Support Initiative, a mutual aid project aimed at donating herbal kits to support the respiratory and nervous systems of those affected by the wildfires. The tinctures, teas, and chest rubs will be distributed to firefighters — including incarcerated individuals on the frontlines — displaced families, people who lost their homes in the fire, and the unhoused community.

“What we’re doing isn’t to gain profit,” Sophia tells DoubleBlind. “The mission is to help people heal using the gifts of herbalism, which is a people’s medicine that dates back many, many generations. We evolved with these [plants].”

Mikaela de la Myco says there are ways to make sales during crises without targeting people in the throes of disaster or exploiting them. It just requires ingenuity.

“The model I prefer is for-profit for-good — if we’re making a profit, it should come from populations not in crisis, with the proceeds benefiting those who are,” she says. “For example, people can sell products to raise funds that directly support people in need, ensuring they receive aid free of charge…It’s about offsetting the costs by engaging those who have the means to contribute. How we redistribute wealth is vitally important if we are going to attempt for-profit ventures in the wake of disaster. It must reflect care, community, and ingenuity — not exploitation.”

Sophia and the LA Fire Herbal Support team have approached their mutual aid project with the intention of “redistributing abundance.” People from around the US donated all the bulk materials needed to assemble herbal medicine kits.

“[Our] initiative is a means of creating a gift economy and wealth redistribution, and I am in awe of the kindness, generosity, and love pouring out from folks around the US,” Sophia tells DoubleBlind. “I believe that we all have some form of abundance to give, be it in our physical and monetary resources, our knowledge, our skill sets, our sense of humor even — and that is what I’m looking to redistribute here.”

As Derek notes, the actions of wellness influencers profiting off disaster reflects a “new low” in the space. “They’re faking compassion online while trying to push people who lost everything down a sales funnel.”

Living in a late-stage capitalist society normalizes relentless self-interest, where survival, success, and profit often trump empathy and community. But does that make this behavior excusable? (Probably not.)

“Those who have the power and tools to help should step forward with their offerings,” Amorinda says. “They need to truly commit to the essence of being of service.”

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