Why online Glamour Gurus are a problem
the impact of social media algorithms & spiritual 'identity branding' on spiritual seekers
I fell for it so hard. It’s a bit embarassing, really. But all the good stories are. So *deep breath* here we go.
Lots has been written about the shadow side of the unregulated spiritual, self-help field on social media. Some of the problems that I’ve seen arise are:
online cults popping up everywhere
retraumatization through uncontained catharsis-based practices
the glamorization of the successful, wealthy, spiritual lifestyle as a marketing tool
spiritual cancel culture
in general: the algorithms that will never pay us, that we do free labour for
Lots of juicy stuff to unpack and I definitely will (if you subscribe, the next installments of my commentary on the new age scene will arrive in your mailbox all by themselves).
What I want to go more deeply into here, is the point about glamorization and why that can be a problem.
The image of these online gurus
In the spiritual field, the algorithm will recommend a lot of the same: a typical spiritual entrepreneur with typical characteristics. The more we see something, the more normal it becomes, and the more credit it gets in our subconscious. This is how advertising works. What we put in our mind matters.
So when we see that typical spiritual image all the time, we start to think, even on a subconscious level: this is what it means to be spiritual.
But we just get sold an image.
Do you recognize this one?
a thin girl in her twenties or early thirties
reels where she’s dancing in lingerie or very scantily clothed
paradise nature backdrops
wellness signaling: juices, crystals, skincare products, sound bowls or whatever’s hip
she has a lot of money and talks about that often and in detail, because abundance is money and that’s just energy, and when we embrace that, we are more spiritual
…and so we are now all striving to emulate that wealthy online guru, aka ‘the Glamour Guru'. I know I did.
This can all be authentic and helpful and totally not a scam, by the way.
BUT.
The problem with the Glamour Guru
The spiritual online field, and the larger self-help field in general, is bound by capitalism. The objective is to sell as much as possible. There is marketing involved.
Take Instagram. About 25% of what we see in our recommended feed is curated by us, the rest by the algorithm, which is out for money and rewards that which makes it more money. I like how Ayla Verheijden talks about this.
That 75% of other, recommended content is there to sell us something (spiritual, if that’s what the algorithm knows you like).
I’m absolutely not here to say that spiritual people shouldn’t charge for their services. That’s an outdated, Christian, medieval concept that unfortunately still a lot of people believe. It was valid in a time where spiritual people lived in monasteries and were provided for by their community to live in peace and be spiritual. There are of course still monasteries. But our society with its modern spiritual teachers no longer functions like that. We all have to make our own money.
In my opinion, providing a spiritual service for money is just as valid as providing any other service. You’re paying for the expertise.
So, the problem with the glamour guru isn’t that they ask for money, or even that they ask for a lot of it. If you don’t want to pay, just don’t pay. If the value of their service mirrors the price tag, that’s great. And even if it doesn’t but everything was clear up front, that would be an excellent lesson in discernment. We do have our own responsibility here.
The problem isn’t even that these spiritual teachers are glamorous. Expression is great in all it’s shapes and forms, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone—including the one that does it! (Often overlooked point.) So, if someone has got their ‘visibility parts’ (the one that wants to be visible and the one that doesn’t) on board, and they love expressing in a glamorous way, it can be totally aligned.
So the problem I’m talking about isn’t ‘selling’ or ‘glamour’.
So what is the problem then?
The algorithm has dished us this image of the Glamour Guru, again and again, and more and more people emulated it. It got normalized. The marketing strategy is often that we need to buy from these people (and stay on the app to make money for Meta or whatever other social media company), if we want to be more abundant, spiritual or well ourselves.
And then, we fall for it and think we absolutely need this or it’s the ultimate expression of spirituality or self-development and if we don’t follow it, we are ‘less than’.
And that’s the problem.
We think that the image is the spirituality.
I fell for this harder than I like to admit.
It’s the nature of our ego to compare, and if we have a lot of toxic shame due to past trauma, the addicitive social media platforms or not-so-well-meaning-people hook into this and can more easily sell us anything that promises us to get rid of that shame.
If you totally don’t relate and think ‘what world does she live in’, that’s totally fine. Glad you didn’t get caught up in all of this. You must not have been on the spiritual corner of Instagram much.
I’m writing this for anyone that is also in the process of weaning themselves off from toxic online self-help, especially that Glamour Guru image on Instagram.
If you find a lot of value in for example abundance coaches or energy updaters or light language singing dancing girls with sound bowls and tight asses, perfect. I’m not here to condemn those that help people get more abundant or free. I don’t want to condemn anyone that operates in this world in an authentic way. I am not shaming people for their sexual expression—everyone has their own way with that.
From time to time, I even go on Instagram (in my webbrowser, that is, with an account that follows no-one and without any ‘recommended’ pages, because bye bye algorithm) to check out what these types of online gurus say, and some of them look much like the image I described above. I find value in what they offer still. And I have a healthy distance to it all now.
There is this book called ‘The Gospel of Wellness’ that talks about new age consumerism in a critical way, that I haven’t gotten around to reading yet. When I checked the reviews, a lot of people said that the book is a bit heavy on the judgment towards lulu lemon-wearing white women that love wellness.
So what if these women want to perform their spirituality and self-help and wellness and then be the subject of White Lotus season 3? (which I didn’t finish btw, I couldn’t stand it)
For me it’s way more important to focus on the conditioning behind it all. The shadow side of it, the egregor that hovers above it and the asuric forces that feed on all of our trauma.
I want to join in on exposing THAT.
Let’s loose the conditioning, sold to us by an algorithm that wants to keep us hooked and is set up to make money off of us, that we HAVE to be like this in order to be spiritual, well or abundant. It’s not true.
We can be:
not skinny
piss-poor
living in a non-tropical non-paradise
having all of our skin covered up by clothing because it’s cold out or just comfy or whatever reason
lacking any common wellness/spiritual attribute, supplement or decoration whatsoever
…and still be on a genuine spiritual path! None of our spirituality is measured by any of these attributes or lack thereof.
We don’t need all of this ‘wellness’ to be well.
We don’t need these ‘signs’ of abundance to be abundant, even.
We don’t even need money for abundance, arguably - there are ways of existing in this world that are absolutely abundant and need very little money, like working for board and lodging or off the land, or marrying someone rich and have them handle your money. It just depends on your definition of abundance. Money is energy but not all energy gets expressed in the same way for everybody.
We also don’t need to ‘look’ spiritual (new age) to be spiritual.
And we can easily loose our definition or value system and replace it with someone else’s, if we get exposed to it a lot. If we don't focus our attention, someone else will—or an online algorithm.
In my workbook Intentionally Online, I teach you how to reclaim your attention from the algorithms and start curating your own life again, through 5 practical steps. You’ll get all the tools to be in control again of your online time, so that what you do in the digital sphere feels relaxing, inspiring and motivating, and totally aligned with your values.
Who’s to blame?
When I was on Instagram acting as a Glamour Guru (because yes I also was one, cringe, I tried to not have to say that, but I am committed to authenticity), a lot of my style of clothing, make-up or the lack thereof and even home decor was influenced by the image of the Glamour Guru that Instagram showed me.
Turns out I actually don’t need THAT much crystals in my home.
Sharing about the divine feminine in a way where I used my own appearance as a prop, made me feel really uncomfortable and also attracted creeps (not to victim-blame myself here, but it is not ALL on these men that can't control themselves, most of it is though) and boy do I have a lot to work through here. I felt pressured and thought I had to present a certain liberated, beautiful image, so I started to look like the Glamour Guru more and more.
I even got a wide-rimmed hat and made pictures of me wearing it on a nature backdrop. You know, that standard Instagram image—although it is maybe a bit outdated.
Not all of this was fully authentically me.
And I didn’t realize that and I already valued authenticity A LOT, even before I started.
I fell for it, still.
And you can blame that on my trauma and toxic shame or frigidity or any other flaw that you perceive in me that my inner critic is now anticipating and totally raining down on me (wow jeez calm down).
I propose a more nuanced viewpoint: these social media algorithms are set up to deceive us, just like cults. And people that join cults aren’t ‘dummies that just want to belong and must’ve had a lot of trauma’. They are often intelligent, open-minded, socially engaged, caring people that were deceived. They were deceived by people that knew exactly how to assess, manipulate and exploit the psychological weak points that everybody has.
Even though this essay wasn’t going to be about cults, yes, I did just compare cult leaders to the people that set up these social media algorithms.
I mean, come on!
These platforms know exactly how to assess, manipulate and exploit the psychological weak points that everybody has and they go for it straight.
I’ve heard it described as ‘the race to the bottom of the brainstem' by ex-google employee Tristan Harris, the brainstem being the part of our brain that governs fight, flight and freeze.
Of course, not all of the online Glamour Gurus that are propagated by the algorithms online are narcissistic psychopaths that want to manipulate us.
But a lot of the normalized behavior in this spiritual online sector is manipulative in its marketing and even its services, in a way that has nothing to do anymore with spirituality, and plays into weak points that we all have, selling an image of spirituality that, in my opinion, we need to be able to see through.
So, I consider it pierced.
Even if the algorithm is completely ‘innocent’ in the sense that it only rewards what makes it more money, there are conscious intentions behind that on the end of the makers, and it is important, because we subconsciously take what we see as truth after being exposed to it a lot.
So, if we care about living a conscious life, we need to be super intentional with this. I’m a huge proponent of taking our energy back and becoming Intentionally Online.
For me, it was a huge purge
It’s why I (mostly) quit Instagram - I only check on 5 accounts on my terms, and no longer post there, as I described in one of my previous posts. The toxicity of this platform has outweighed the pros for me.
I am not calling out any person in particular that behaves like a Glamour Guru. There are many people that do this. There are also people that look very glamorous that have very little shadow.
I am calling out an underlying pattern that is instigated by an algorithm that has rewarded certain marketing tendencies that play into our weak points.
I am also calling out the huge spiritual ego, that granted, is part of the spiritual awakening journey as a recurring initiation, but has completely festered online to the point of not really being a ‘helpful initiation’ anymore but just a marketing campaign.
This essay is for the people that, like me, need deconditioning from this image.
For me, it’s not about ‘blame’.
It’s about awareness.
I see an unhealthy pattern, and also the intention behind these platforms, and also some of the more unwell Glamour Gurus for indeed preying on traumatized people.
However, we also all have our own responsibility. We’re here to learn. Even if we have been deceived and we tagged along in what turned out to be a toxic environment that got to us (raises hand), we can bring compassion and awareness to that, and use it to transform.
Identity branding & the spiritual ego
I mentioned that ‘the spiritual ego’ is in fact part of the journey of spiritual awakening. It can be part of our awakening in the journey of having a business as well.
This has been true in my own experience and it’s what I’ve seen around me.
It goes a bit like this: we awaken, and open to higher levels of consciousness. Wow! So enlightened. But that's only the start. And oh shit, do we ever NOT know that when we’ve just awakened.
Our ego steps in again because we probably got triggered by something random (as it happens in life), and this same ego that wants to protect us and make us feel good, starts attaching now to the ‘thing that felt so good just now’, which was the spiritual experience.
We then build a story, an identity around that experience and try to get back to it.
The spiritual ego is born.
Of course, we can’t catch spiritual enlightenment like that and hold onto it forever. It is only found in the moment, again and again. And gradually, when we release more and more trauma, the ‘enlightenment’ is found more easily and there is less stuff in the way of it, so it can be more continuous. That’s how I see it at least.
And I am just stumbling along like everybody else.
But let’s talk about identity branding.
When I was a Glamour Guru online (the cringe is so bad), I had to build a brand.
Online branding on social media is often called ‘identity branding’, because you’re sharing yourself, your identity, as the image of your business.
So this brand was supposed to be a representation of my identity, or rather, my soul, because for spiritual entrepreneurs we have to take it one step further.
Wow, that sounds healthy and totally foolproof.
It poses a problem, because the soul isn’t commodifiable. It can’t be captured for eternity like an insect in amber.
It is absolutely unhealthy to treat ourselves (and our marketing and our business) this way, in my opinion.
It doesn’t leave room for growth and not-knowing and basically all of our humanity. Any identity brand turns into a prison of our own making.
How to keep your spiritual brand real
I believe creating an online spiritual brand can be done. I’ve seen lots of people successfully doing it.
However, it is tricky. The ego can hijack it at any time.
We have to realize, an identity brand is by definition going to present an unattainable image, because its is only a selection of what this person chooses to share, and it needs to grow along with them.
So it is already flawed by its very nature.
Then, it is a deep spiritual journey to keep your spiritual identity brand genuine and not let the ego creep in too ridiculously.
That’s how it is framed often, in spiritual marketing: your business will be the deepest soul growth you’ve ever gone through and it will mirror you all your trauma.
It’s true. I guess children will do that as well, and romantic relationships. But yeah, creating spiritual content on social media is pretty high up there.
The reality is: the spiritual ego can hijack the spiritual identity brand at any time, and does so often and very insidiously. No matter how much authentic vulnerability someone shares, it is always curated, hand-picked.
Subtle influences of the ego can creep in to make us come off as slightly sexier, even in our rage, grief, stagnation, poverty, fear and whatever other experiences we pose as vulnerably as we can in order to sell our stuff. Been there done that.
Did you see that sacred rage is a hype too, an aesthetic? There is snakes and dark colors and naked women splayed on rocky surfaces, covered in shadows and mud. Wow, to look like that. It can be quite sexy.
Fear and terror are clad in nervous system lingo and that makes it somehow less raw, more domesticated and endearing. There is wisdom and depth here, big lessons that the ego loves once the suffering is done. Handy point-by-points on carousel posts make it all so digestible and unthreathening.
Poverty is clad in humility, in beauty-found-in-the-little-things.
None of these artistic renditions of our usually-suppressed-and-shamed human experiences are bad, just turned into an image.
That image can liberate and emprison at the same time.
And then we can see which images sell the best. And then our ego can start presenting ourselves just a bit prettier, shinier, smarter, sexier, wiser, to keep selling that image. Just a bit more rage, fear, sex, humility, just need to frame it a bit better…
And now we have exploited ourselves, which leads to burnout.
And we have to deal with that inner fall-out again and see how we want to align with our values and return to our integrity in a perpetually flawed fucking system.
It’s a whole process. It is annoying and gross and really, really REALLY leads to burnout and I am so done with it.
And this is how the spiritual ego can be part of the spiritual awakening for entrepreneurs.
If we keep bringing our awareness to it, and adjusting along the way, it can be a teacher. Posting on social media can teach us so much about our own vanity, fears, and vulnerabilities.
We might find ourselves coy about innocent subjects (which is a phrase I loved in a piece about how to spot ChatGPT in writing).
Why?
Maybe we were criticized about these subjects when we were young. Maybe they reveal hidden passions. Expressing ourselves is an uncontrollable endeavor. We will never be able to completely cauterize it, to stop our guts from spilling out.
That thing we desperately try to hide? It will show.
This self-exploration process is slow and deep
And that’s why the whole Glamour Guru image can pose a problem as well, because when we are genuinely engaging with our brand and our online presence in an authentic way, we naturally slow down.
We get thoughtful.
We reflect.
That needs a lot of time, and inner wintering. Sometimes, we might have nothing to say at all.
But the Glamour Guru never rests - they just keep shining and posting like a big artificial doll that never tires. We all tried to be AI before AI was a thing and now it is better at being perfect than us.
In order to harvest the deep lessons about the intersections of our brand, our ego and our soul, we need to become quiet. Stop moving and let ourselves float down like a feather, so we can land. Step out of that manic Glamour Guru world.
And see if we even want to include our identity in our brand ever again.
Because, what if we don't have to?
What if we can just sell and say what we want to sell and only focus on the product or service, which then also forms our brand?
And we can keep our ego/identity out of the image altogether?
No more Glamour Guru! No more awkward balancing acts of trying to come across as vulnerable while protecting your vulnerability.
It is an option.
In conclusion
So for me, the problems with the Glamour Guru image are:
We feel like this is the only way to be ‘spiritual’ and get caught in a toxic shame spiral
The spiritual ego can hijack our brand if we’re entrepreneurs ourselves
It takes us out of the slow pace of genuine awakening and creation
I mean, these are just a few ways it can affect us negatively, and I’ve spoken about these kinds of things before, so maybe I’m repeating some of the shadows that I observe. They can be pretty obvious as well.
Still, for me, there were ways in which it wasn’t obvious. Ways in which it crept in. So I’m laying it all out here.
I was humbled to realize how I had started to believe in the ‘spiritual image’ of the Glamour Guru after all, how I had started to hurry myself up without realizing it. We can only see the extent of our blindspot when we’ve opened our eyes and dared to see.
But that’s the case with any spiritual awakening journey. We can only see the illusion when we step out of it.
The question is: do we want the Glamour Guru to be a part of that awakening journey in the same way that we’ve been engaging with it, or do we want to seek out spiritual value in other shapes and forms?
For me personally, I’ve taken a step back from that world. The spiritual teachers that I follow are not really glamorous now—and I look at the Glamour Gurus on Instagram less and less.
The ones I follow now are often quite humble and look like regular people you can run into in the street.
It is also the reason that I write here, and not show an image of me. Writing focuses on the content, not what it ‘looks like’— you won’t see me dancing in flowing dresses anymore or posing in a bikini (not that I ever did that) or wide-rimmed hat, although I love wearing that hat.
And when I want to sell you something again, you'll know.
Edit, a few days later: actually, I do have something to sell, now, yay! I go inspired and created a workbook about being Intentionally Online. You might have seen it pop up throughout this essay. I really want to share how to become sovereign online again, and take your power back from the algorithms.
They are this normalized addiction in our society, it is making us sick, and I want to aid in breaking that pattern. It is not a spiritual guide, it is super practical and meant for literally anyone that lives even a little bit online where there are algorithms out to get us. So, if you need a practical, step-by-step guide to take a fine comb to your online habits, and make them feel vitalizing, relaxing and inspiring again, check out my Intentionally Online Workbook.
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