There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Andy laughs at fashion.
She thinks she’s outside of it all. Above it. Unaffected.
Then Miranda Priestly calmly explains that the “random” blue jumper Andy is wearing was actually chosen for her years earlier by the fashion industry itself. Trends trickle down. Culture trickles down. What feels personal is often inherited.
It’s one of the best explanations of influence ever written and I think about it when we watch the wellness industry panic online.
Recently, Vogue published an article about how brands are becoming less interested in chasing virality and feeding the algorithm”. After twenty years of social media, even the industries that built themselves on attention are starting to look elsewhere.
Brands like Miu Miu are investing in literary clubs, book events and real world experiences. Others are leaning into run clubs, community gatherings and slower forms of connection. The chic ones are doing it for the substance not the content so it is even more cool because it is barely recorded. The article talks about a growing exhaustion with algorithmic culture, the sense that constant visibility creates a kind of flattening. Everything starts to look the same. Sound the same. Feel the same.
Even fashion, the industry most associated with trends, seems to understand that viral moments are temporary. One minute you are the hottest thing on the internet, next you are yesterday’s aesthetic.
Yet in yoga and wellness, we are still being sold the idea that permanent online visibility is the answer.
Common business guru advice is :
Post more.
Educate more.
Optimise more.
Repurpose more.
Stay consistent.
Beat the algorithm.
Be visible every day.
Build a personal brand.
Stand out.
Niche down.
Hook attention in three seconds.
The irony is that many of the people selling these strategies present them as fixed truths, when culture itself is fluid. Fashion changes, media changes, algorithms, change, consumer behaviour, changes, attention changes, nothing stay still for very long.
Now that’s the real problem with turning social media into an entire business strategy: eventually you become dependent on a machine that keeps changing the rules.
The wellness industry often frames this as a mindset issue. If your content isn’t working, you simply need to work harder. Learn better hooks. Better storytelling. Better SEO. Better reels but sometimes the culture is just shifting underneath you.
People are tired. Tired of being marketed to, tired of performing online, tired of having to show off and tired of endless self optimisation, disguises authenticity.
Ironically, the future may look far less digital than we were promised.
Smaller rooms. Local communities. Libraries, book clubs, conversations, board gamenights, classes that feel human again. Not everything meaningful needneeds to scale and not everything valuable will go viral,and not everything that disappears from the algorithms favour has failed.
