Deinfluencing and Money: What the "Don't Buy This" Trend Actually Means for Your Finances

🚫 What is deinfluencing?🔗

Deinfluencing is a social media trend where creators tell their audiences not to buy certain viral, overhyped, or overpriced products. It started on TikTok in late 2022, exploded in early 2023, and racked up over 1.3 billion views by early 2024. The format is simple: a creator looks down the camera and says, don't buy the Dyson Airwrap, the Stanley cup, the Charlotte Tilbury Wand, the UGG Minis, the AirPods Max, here's why. Sometimes they'll recommend a cheaper alternative. Sometimes they'll just tell you to save your money.

📅 Where did deinfluencing come from?🔗

The term first appeared in late December 2022. Creator @maddiebwells posted one of the earliest videos using the hashtag on 30 December 2022. By January 2023, the format was spreading fast, with creators including @michelleskidelsky, Alyssa Kromelis (@alyssastephanie), and @katiehub.org all posting "don't buy this" content.

Two things turbocharged the trend at the same time. First, "Mascaragate." In January 2023, beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira posted a sponsored video for L'Oreal's Telescopic Lift Mascara. Viewers accused her of wearing false lashes to exaggerate the product's results, and the backlash was enormous. It crystallised a simmering distrust of sponsored content that had been building for a while.

Second, the cost-of-living squeeze. Inflation was biting and grocery prices were climbing. Alyssa Kromelis put it bluntly in her viral video: "There's no longer a need for us to be buying $45 blush when eggs are $8 a dozen." That line landed because it was true, and the timing wasn't coincidental.

📈 How the trend worked, and why it spread so fast🔗

Michelle Skidelsky, who built a following of 173,000 with her "Deinfluencing things you DO NOT NEED" series, described the pull of social media shopping with uncomfortable accuracy: "It's very easy to fall into the rabbit hole of buying things you see online in the hopes of buying yourself into a better life."

For Australian audiences, the numbers behind that rabbit hole are significant. A Compare the Market survey of 1,001 adult Australians (September 2024) found that 50.1% of respondents made purchasing decisions based on what they saw on their social media feeds. Among Gen Z, that figure jumped to 84%. Among Millennials, 66%.

A separate Finder survey of 1,009 respondents (November 2024) found that 40% of Australians, equivalent to 8.4 million people, had bought something online after seeing it on social media. The average social media shopper spent $420 over the past year, adding up to $3.5 billion nationally. The top purchases were clothing (25%), beauty products (16%), electronics (15%), and accessories (12%). Australia's influencer marketing industry was worth AU$800 million in 2024, up from AU$690 million the year before.

In early 2023, the ACCC conducted an internet sweep of 118 Australian influencer accounts across Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. The finding was stark: 81% of those influencers raised concerns under Australian Consumer Law, mostly for failing to disclose brand relationships clearly. In the fashion sector specifically, 96% of influencers swept raised concerns. The ACCC's requirements are clear: disclosures must be upfront, obvious, and use language consumers understand, such as #ad, "paid partnership," or "sponsored." Vague labels like #sp or "gifted" alone aren't enough.

Jordan Santos, an influencer marketing veteran quoted in Vogue UK, described the shift: "Customers are feeling influencer fatigue and they're becoming more savvy and aware that many of the items they see on an influencer's page are gifted or sponsored."

🧠 The psychology behind "don't buy this" content🔗

Why does a video telling you not to buy something feel so refreshing? A few things are going on at once.

Negativity bias. We pay more attention to warnings and criticism than to praise. A creator saying "this product is garbage" triggers more engagement than "this product is fine."

Trust through authenticity. When a creator says "don't buy this," audiences infer they have nothing to gain from the advice. That inference lowers the usual scepticism about commercial motives. Paradoxically, saying "don't buy" can make a creator more credible, which makes them more influential.

Persuasion knowledge activation. Deinfluencing content makes viewers more aware of marketing tactics generally, prompting critical evaluation rather than automatic acceptance. Flinders University researchers have examined this as a "framing effect."

Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of sustainability consultancy Futerra, described the underlying dynamic in an NPR interview: "We've known for decades that the number one influence on your behaviours is your friends and family. It turns out we have a close relationship with creators. We hold them in that same friends-and-family bubble."

🎯 The essential: Jasmine Enberg, a social media analyst at Insider Intelligence, named the strategic dimension clearly: "Deinfluencing is still influencing. Creators are using their power to sway the purchasing decisions of a broader population. They've just adapted the trend to resonate with consumers during an economic downturn."

🤨 The honest caveats: what deinfluencing gets wrong🔗

It's still influencing. Social media analyst Kris Ruby was blunt about this: "To be deinfluenced, you have to be influenced to begin with." She drew the parallel clearly: saying "don't buy this" is structurally identical to saying "buy this." Both are forms of persuasion. Karen Wu, who posts as @cakedbybabyk, acknowledged the irony from the inside: "It's definitely ironic because you're still influencing people by telling people what to do." Alyssa Kromelis, one of the trend's early voices, was candid: "Whether I'm telling somebody to not buy something, to buy something, to buy this versus that, it's going to be seen as influencing either way."

"Don't buy this, buy that instead." A significant portion of deinfluencing content doesn't actually tell people to stop buying, it redirects them. Creator Mikayla Farwig described the pattern in an NPR interview: "They were like, 'Hey, I'm going to de-influence you from this lip gloss because this lip gloss is $42. How about you buy this $10 lip gloss instead?' It was still promoting this overconsumption." Creator Hannah Rosato, speaking to Forbes, was direct about the dupe culture problem: recommending cheaper alternatives is "still advocating for consumption," and it can come off as "predatory" when influencers have affiliate links to the "duped" products in their bios.

Trend-hopping and performative anti-consumption. Alex Paquin, founder of ad agency Zerotrillion, identified the business risk: "Brands have to ask themselves, what is this influencer's propensity to turn on us in the event that their followers don't like the content they make for us?" Isaias Hernandez, an environmental educator, put the structural limitation plainly: "Deinfluencing is a really great conversation starter to try to talk about the belly of the beast which is over-consumerism. However, deinfluencing, in my opinion, doesn't really serve a larger purpose in addressing systemic issues."

🔄 From deinfluencing to underconsumption core🔗

By mid-2024, the conversation had shifted. The specific product callouts were still happening, but a broader aesthetic and lifestyle movement was emerging alongside them: underconsumption core. We've covered underconsumption core in depth separately, the trend that came after deinfluencing and covers the related "use what you have, buy less" shift. This article focuses on deinfluencing itself, but the two are connected: deinfluencing was the gateway, and underconsumption core was where many people ended up.

Creators like Sabrina Pare (@sabrina.sustainable.life), who had amassed nearly 15 million likes on her videos, were posting content showing minimal wardrobes, secondhand finds, and worn-in everyday items, a step beyond just avoiding one overhyped product. Aja Barber, author of Consumed: The Need for Collective Change and often described as the original deinfluencer for her decade of anti-consumption messaging, identified why the conversation matters even when it's imperfect: "If you can get people to start thinking about the things that they buy, they start thinking about a lot of the bigger topics as well."

💡 What deinfluencing actually means for your money🔗

Lesson 1: the 48-hour rule for viral product purchases. Before buying anything you saw online, wait 48 hours. The desire to buy a viral product is often driven by FOMO and social proof, not a genuine need, and most of the time the urge passes on its own. If the pull to buy is really about not wanting to feel left out, our guide to loud budgeting has scripts for saying no without the guilt.

Lesson 2: recognise the hype premium. Viral products carry a price premium that has nothing to do with their functional value. Ask yourself: am I buying the product, or am I buying the feeling of being someone who owns it?

Lesson 3: audit your feed's financial impact. Finder's data puts the average Australian social media shopper's annual spend at $420. It's worth actually tracking what you've bought after seeing it on social media over the past six months. If the pattern feels closer to anxiety-driven spending than genuine desire, our guide to doom spending goes deeper on that link between economic anxiety and impulse purchases.

Lesson 4: distinguish deinfluencing from financial advice. Deinfluencers are not financial advisers. A creator telling you the Stanley cup isn't worth $60 is giving you a product opinion, not a financial plan.

Lesson 5: ask why, not just whether. Christina Mychaskiw, a former shopaholic who once carried more than $120,000 in student debt, described what made deinfluencing content genuinely useful: "It was sort of a refreshing take to see, 'Hey, this thing didn't change my life. This thing didn't work the way it was supposed to. It didn't live up to the hype. Save your money.'" The real question isn't "should I buy this viral product?" It's "why do I want it?" Aja Barber framed the gateway quality of these conversations well: "The conversation about fast fashion and consumer goods, I find it's like a gateway. People are like, 'Oh, it's just a frivolous dress,' and then they start to learn a little bit more about what's behind it, and it just keeps going."

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗