The authenticity trap for public figures

Why influencers unsettle us

Muzamil opens by naming what everyone feels but doesn’t say: there’s something off about influencer culture. The discomfort runs deeper than jealousy. He’s not interested in condemning creators, but in understanding why so many people resent them.

Ali, a clinical psychologist who works with public figures, has spent years studying this from both ends. He’d just watched “The Social Dilemma,” and the documentary’s framing is revealing. It treats social platforms as behavioral manipulation engines designed by engineers in Silicon Valley. But Ali sees something else: ordinary people uploading their best selves, not knowing the cumulative effect.

“A lot of what we do is rubbing off very poorly on the viewers,” Muzamil says. He makes his hair before uploading stories. His followers see polished hair as the baseline. When they wake up with bad hair, they feel worse about themselves. They compare their morning to his carefully curated morning, multiplied by 10 other creators, all perfect. The consumer begins to normalize perfection.

The envy mechanism

Research Ali has studied points to one factor that determines whether social media helps or harms you: your level of envy. Not time spent, not frequency of checking. Envy.

When you scroll passively, not engaging, not commenting, just watching other people’s wins accumulate on your screen, envy rises. “There are more chances that you’re doing empathy, your envy levels increase,” Ali explains. Higher envy correlates directly with negative mental health impacts, how you perceive others, how you see your own self-esteem.

But the data is clear. Increased social media usage, at scale, is not good for mental health. Muzamil presses on the asymmetry: creators produce. Users consume. The mental load is wildly different.

The performer’s dilemma

For someone like Muzamil, with over 100,000 followers, the situation is unique. You can’t separate your production from your consumption. You’re both the performer and the audience member. But Ali makes a distinction. Someone who’s purely consuming, gaining no economic benefit, bears the full weight of comparison with no upside.

“You have to be the best version of what people want you to be,” Muzamil says. This is the social economy dictating the rules. You want to be yourself. Authenticity is human. But the algorithm rewards consistency, presentation, the curated version. Most creators feel trapped.

Ali has seen this repeatedly. “It’s a huge pandemic in content creators,” he says. Even before cancel culture entered the equation, creators had no one to talk to who understood the pressure. In front of an audience of thousands, you’re taking a hit to your self-esteem. Step offline for five minutes and the vibe shifts entirely. Then you have to flip back on, smile, and post. “A lot of people will come out and say you’re disingenuous. And they’re right.”

The demigod problem

Ali brings a therapist’s understanding of a troubling dynamic. A client once told him something that stopped him cold: “People on public platforms seem like gods. And it’s not that they’re trying to be. It’s that that’s what they seem like. And when a god makes a mistake, their followers become atheists.”

The statement haunted him. It applies to any profession, but especially to influencers with massive followings. Idealization leads to dehumanization. When someone is placed on a pedestal high enough, no mistake is small. No apology is fast enough. There’s no redemption arc because the person was never fully human to begin with.

Muzamil pushes back on the extremism. “People feel like they have to take moral stances on everything,” he says, referencing the pressure to comment on every crisis, every injustice. But compassion fatigue is real. If an influencer doesn’t address climate change, gender rights, politics, and 15 other causes, the narrative becomes: they don’t care, they’re complicit. Influencers become a second news cycle. Except the algorithm rewards outrage and doesn’t reward complexity.

Digital boundaries as self-care

Ali is direct about one thing: if someone in your feed has shown themselves to be a negative influence, unfollow them. “Unfollowing them is taking care of your mental health,” he says. Some people resist, saying unfollowing is immature, that they want to understand the other side. Ali reframes it: maturity isn’t tolerating harm. Maturity is knowing what you can control and acting on it.

The concept of digital detox is often framed as all or nothing. Give up your phone for five days, or you’re weak. Ali offers something more sustainable. “You don’t have to use digital detox that you don’t have to use for a week. You can take out hours in the day.” Remove phones from your room one and a half hours before sleep. Protect your sleep quality. Phones emit blue light that suppresses melatonin. Poor sleep tanks your mood. Poor mood pushes you back into the cycle of feeling worse.

The acceleration of tabloid culture

Muzamil connects the dots to an older phenomenon. In the 70s and 80s, TMZ, paparazzi, and tabloids existed. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton were treated the same way: elevated, then torn down. The pattern is ancient. But social media changed the speed and permanence. A bad joke made at 15, posted on Twitter 10 years ago, resurfacing now, carries the same weight as if it happened yesterday. There’s no statute of limitations. There’s no redemption.

“We don’t understand,” Muzamil says. “First of all, how do you redeem yourself?” The question sits unanswered. If an old post haunts you, what’s the path forward. The book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” by John Ronson chronicles people whose lives imploded from single moments taken out of context, shared by strangers, embedded in Google’s permanent record.

Looking for the human

Ali’s closing reflection is grounded in his work with other public figures. Mistakes happen. Ali made a mistake with a client, said something insensitive, and weeks later apologized sincerely. The client was surprised. She’d expected defensiveness. “But I’m going to make mistakes. And this probably also is not the last mistake that I’m going to make because this might be a professional relationship, but it’s a human relationship.”

Muzamil pulls this forward to the listener. When you see a public figure online, try to find the human underneath. “I promise you, you’re going to find the same flaws that you have.” That recognition, that moment of seeing the person instead of the image, changes everything. It makes connection possible.

The conversation circles back to where it started: a simple question about why influencers unsettle us. The answer is more uncomfortable than cynicism. We’ve made them gods and then punished them for being human. The fix isn’t to cancel influencers or to idolize them harder. It’s to see them clearly.