How often have you seen adv
The rise of social media in the last decade has given anybody the ability to gather a large following and have the world as an audience to express their views and ideas. The fitness industry has drastically grown in popularity since the rise of social media, giving way to ‘fitness influencers’ who use social media to promote workout programs and supplements. The most common way these influencers will bullshit unknowing people is by advertising a workout program or supplement that promises to transform your body in a short amount of time, while they conveniently leave out the fact that they take PEDs, or performance enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids. This misleads people into believing they can reshape their body just by taking their supplements and doing their workouts. Supplement companies are enabled to bullshit consumers as they are not required by the FDA to regulate their products meaning that many of them are dishonest about how much of or even what ingredients are in their products.
Frankfurt writes in On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit, “The fact about herself that the bullshitter hides… is that the truth values of her statements are not of central interest to her.”1 This quote holds true to many of the ‘fitness gurus’ and companies trying to mislead people into buying their products or programs as they are knowingly bullshitting to profit off of you. The only thing they care about is making a profit, even if what they’re selling could negatively affect your health in the long term. In Social Networking Technology and the Virtues, Shannon Vallor writes, “Honesty as a virtue is the willingness in words and deeds to put one’s authentic self in play.”2 It is much harder to determine if someone is being honest online than it is in person because people can disguise body language and mannerisms that would make you question their motives in person. People online use this to their advantage because it is easier to mislead people online since it is harder to determine if you are honest or not; similar to the way it is hard to read sarcasm online. The only way to truly know if supplements are safe or not is to ask your doctor as they will be knowledgeable about the products and can inform you about their effects and if they are safe.
References:
1. Frankfurt, Harry. “On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit.” The Philosophy of Deception, 2009, pp. 37–48., doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327939.003.0003.
2. Vallor, Shannon. “Social Networking Technology and the Virtues.” Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 12, no. 2, 2009, pp. 157–170., doi:10.1007/s10676-009-9202-1.
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteIt sounded like this was a topic that you're actually passionate about, which makes the content inherently more interesting to read.
I would say that bullshitting is a deceivingly harder topic to talk about than most, as from face value, it's essentially just saying that lying is bad. And everybody knows that.
How would you spin this topic to talk about deeper ethical issues at play? What does lying mean, if the liar themselves believes it's the truth? What if the fitness guru actually uses these products every day, believing that it's the reason why his/her body is so impeccable? Then there's the question of accountability. Is the influencer, who spreads the lies, or the manufacturer, who makes the lies accountable?
I think addressing these questions would make your article a lot more engrossing and riveting.
I enjoyed reading your article; this is a topic I am interested in as well! I noticed that you discussed more about the readings in this post when compared to your first one, and I think that really adds to your post. Something to think about for next time is to introduce authors briefly before you start discussing them as some readers might not know who Frankfurt is. Also, it might help your post flow a little better if you incorporated the readings throughout your post instead of just the end. All in all, good job with your post!
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