There are powerful online combinations that can easily lead to ethical or unethical. For example, parents of a child who needs expensive surgery may ask for funding and hundreds, if not thousands of people might respond with caring and good intention. Other powerful combinations might be a popular fitness guru, who is an online influencer. The person might appeal to people with “body image issues,” and offers loads of advice – for a fee. What influences the influencer? Sometimes greed!
“Brittany Dawn” Davis
Brittany Dawn is an Instagram health, diet, and fitness influencer who lives in the Dallas-area, but in reality, she lives online. The adviser reputedly has 840,000 followers on social media where she merrily posts images of herself (usually in skimpy beach attire) frolicking on the beach. She takes pride in posting “before” pictures of herself from 2003, back to when she was “not so in shape” and several pounds heavier.
As Brittany Dawn toned her body, she had a change of hair color and hairstyle, learned the intricacies of makeup, and transformed herself. Undoubtedly with the help of a social media manager, she added thousands, then tens of thousands of followers.
At some point, Davis realized she had a goldmine at her feet. She started selling 60-day workout packages complete with
specialized diets. As part of the plan, followers were promised access to her by phone. All this, for only $250.
However, there was a problem. Thousands of (primarily) women who bought the package never received the package. Others said that the telephone “consultations” was sporadic at best. They might place a call, and it could be weeks – if ever – that anyone would get back to them.
Biting Back
The problem with social media is that it can bite back, and bite back hard. For example, people scammed by Davis formed the Facebook group “Brittany Dawn Fitness Complaints,” and there are about 4,000 members. They are considering legal action as information is accumulated to go after her business practices. There is a petition on Change.org called: “Stop Brittany Dawn Fitness Scams” with 8,000 signees to a petition and the State of Texas may go after her brand. Though certainly not endorsed by anyone in these groups, the fitness star has been receiving death threats.
Naturally, the fitness guru has mounted a campaign to defend herself. In a YouTube video she said:
“I apologize to anyone who feels like they got scammed from me and I genuinely promise that my intentions from the start were pure… these claims (against me) are coming from years ago after I got launched into a business that took off so fast, I didn’t know to mentally handle it.”
Despite her posturing, apparently, no one has accepted her apology which was seen as being disingenuous. So far, the fitness star has not been responsive to media requests. In addition, she has not refunded the money she scammed or called those people who paid for “private consultations.”
Those who use social media are often confused by “platforms.” They equate the fact that someone who has 840,000 followers as being legitimate, while someone, let’s say, with 2,000 followers to be a nobody. In fact, the reverse could be true. It is a common fact that followers can be bought by using social media “consultants.” At this stage, there is no telling how many naïve women Brittany Dawn Davis was able to scam. Using the 4,000 women who bothered to complain, at $250 per fitness package, it amounts to $1 million. I suspect the numbers are much higher.
The Elements of Fraud
Despite her apologies, Davis clearly understood that what she was doing was unethical. If she was as overwhelmed as she claimed, she could have halted accepting the money on her website. She saw an opportunity to get rich from women who were feeling physically inadequate in some way, and who also felt that someone with as many followers as she had, just had to be legitimate. The term “influencer” is a moving target at best, especially when it comes to social media.
Beyond the opportunity to get to a “vulnerable” audience, Davis had the obvious need to make money from her online presence. How much money she made, we don’t know, and may never know. She appears to be keeping every penny of it for now.
Her rationalization that she was overwhelmed is both frightening and rather unbelievable. No one believed her apology. My ethical take is a lot simpler. She viewed the same anonymous internet that supported her as protecting her. She was “connected” to 840,000 people, and not related to one. In the end, they were digital beings, not people. What influences the influencer? Sometimes greed!
