Scroll through TikTok, Instagram or YouTube and it doesn’t take long to find somebody telling you about the next product you apparently need to buy.
It’s viral. It’s selling out. Everyone wants one. Stock is running low. Buy it before it’s gone.
But are consumers starting to get tired of being told what they should want?
Recently, while looking at TikTok posts about the NeeDoh Advent Calendar, I noticed something interesting in the comments. Alongside the excitement were distinctly sceptical reactions. People questioned whether products were genuine, immediately wondered how much they were going to cost and, in one particularly telling comment, somebody said the content had effectively “deinfluenced” them from buying.
A few social media comments don’t establish a consumer trend. But they caught my attention because they fit into something much bigger that researchers are now studying: deinfluencing.
What Is Deinfluencing?
Deinfluencing turns the traditional influencer model on its head.
Instead of saying, “You need to buy this”, a deinfluencer might explain why a viral product isn’t worth the money, suggest keeping what you already own, recommend a cheaper alternative or simply tell followers not to buy something.
The idea isn’t entirely new. Deinfluencing became a noticeable social media phenomenon several years ago. What’s interesting now is that academic research is beginning to tell us more about why it works.
There Is Evidence Behind Deinfluencing
A 2026 study published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science examined deinfluencing through a pilot study and four preregistered experiments involving 1,456 participants.
The researchers found that exposure to deinfluencing content increased perceptions of an influencer’s trustworthiness and reduced scepticism about their motives.
Perhaps surprisingly, telling people not to buy something could subsequently make recommendations from that influencer more effective.
That suggests an interesting problem for conventional influencer marketing.
If everything an influencer talks about is amazing, essential or about to sell out, consumers have good reason to question whether they are receiving an independent recommendation or simply another sales message.
Other research published in the Journal of Business Research has associated deinfluencing with authenticity, more informed purchasing decisions and encouraging people to consume less.
Have We Reached Peak “You Need This”?
There is a familiar formula across social media:
- “Run, don’t walk.”
- “You NEED this.”
- “This is going viral.”
- “It’s selling out everywhere.”
- “I can’t believe this is still in stock.”
Those messages can be extremely effective because they combine social proof with urgency and fear of missing out.
But their effectiveness also creates the conditions for a backlash.
When virtually every week brings another supposedly unmissable product, consumers can reasonably start asking a different set of questions.
Is it actually in demand? Is it genuinely difficult to find? Is the product worth the money? Or am I simply watching another piece of marketing?
That distinction could become increasingly important for marketers.
The NeeDoh Example
The NeeDoh Advent Calendar is a useful current example, although it is important not to overstate what the social media comments tell us.
There is genuine evidence of substantial interest in NeeDoh products and the Advent Calendar has attracted significant attention. At the same time, some of the TikTok comments I encountered were pushing back against the excitement surrounding it.
The comments aren’t enough to draw conclusions about wider consumer attitudes, but they do illustrate something interesting: strong demand and consumer scepticism about social media hype can exist at the same time.
A product can be genuinely popular while consumers still question some of the marketing, recommendations and urgency surrounding it.
For anyone trying to understand consumer demand, separating genuine demand from the promotional noise around it matters.
From Popularity to Credibility?
Perhaps what we’re seeing isn’t the end of influence at all. It may be a shift in what makes somebody, or something, influential.
Buying decisions will probably continue to be shaped by recommendations, social media and people we trust. But having a huge audience doesn’t necessarily make a recommendation credible. Increasingly, the important question may be: why are you pushing this product?
Is it genuinely good? Is there evidence that people are buying it or struggling to find it? Have you compared it with alternatives? Or are you promoting it because you’ve been paid, received a free product, earn commission from the sale, or simply know that talking about the latest viral craze generates views?
That distinction between popularity and credibility is important to how I’ve tried to build Demand Hunt Live. Social media activity can be a useful demand signal, but it isn’t treated as proof on its own. Demand Hunt looks for supporting evidence across multiple sources, records what has actually been found and then assigns a NOW, TEST, WATCH or NO rating based on the strength of that evidence.
The aim isn’t to replace one person’s opinion with another. It’s to make the reasoning behind a signal visible. If Demand Hunt says something appears to be in unusually high demand, readers should be able to understand why we’ve reached that conclusion.
Perhaps that’s where influence itself is heading. Not necessarily towards people with the biggest audiences, but towards sources that can answer a much more sceptical consumer’s question: “Why should I believe you?”
Part of the Reason I Built Demand Hunt
There is a personal side to this for me too.
As a parent, I’ve become thoroughly fed up with discovering the latest must-have product just as everybody else does. Suddenly the kids are asking for something, social media is full of it, prices have gone crazy and everywhere sensible has sold out.
And quite often I’m left wondering where this thing even came from. A few weeks earlier I’d never heard of it. Now apparently every child needs one and I’m searching the internet trying to find somewhere that still has stock.
Some of these products are great. Others, frankly, leave me wondering whether I’m paying a ridiculous amount of money for the latest bit of rubbish that’s been propelled into children’s wish lists by social media.
What particularly frustrates me is always seeming to arrive at the end of the story. By the time something is obviously in huge demand, everybody knows about it.
That frustration is actually part of what sits behind Demand Hunt Live.
I wanted to know whether it was possible to spot some of these movements earlier. Not by following whoever is shouting loudest on TikTok, but by looking for evidence that something unusual is actually happening.
From Influencing to Evidence
Demand Hunt Live searches for evidence of unusual demand, shortages and emerging opportunities across the UK. Rather than treating social media popularity as proof of demand, it looks for supporting signals and grades what it finds.
That means something attracting attention doesn’t automatically become an opportunity.
Demand Hunt uses four ratings:
NOW means the evidence suggests something is happening now.
TEST means there appears to be an opportunity worth testing.
WATCH means there is an interesting signal, but not enough evidence yet.
NO means we’ve investigated something and the evidence doesn’t currently support the apparent opportunity.
That final category may become increasingly important.
In an online environment designed to amplify excitement, there could be value not just in finding what’s hot, but in identifying when the evidence doesn’t support the hype.
See what Demand Hunt Live is currently finding across the UK
What Does Deinfluencing Mean for Marketers?
I don’t think the lesson is that influencer marketing is dying. The evidence doesn’t support such a sweeping conclusion.
In fact, the research suggests something rather more subtle.
Consumers may place greater trust in people who are prepared to say that something isn’t worth buying.
For brands and marketers, that could mean credibility increasingly depends upon being willing to sacrifice an occasional sale, click or commission rather than recommending everything.
For influencers, it could mean that saying “don’t buy this” occasionally makes “I recommend this” considerably more believable.
And for consumers, perhaps the most useful question when the next viral must-have appears isn’t “Where can I buy it?”
It might be:
“What’s the evidence that everybody actually wants it?”
Sources and Further Reading
This article was informed by recent academic research into deinfluencing, including research published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Journal of Business Research.
- Let me deinfluence you! The impacts of deinfluencing content, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2026.
- The dawn of ‘deinfluencing’ as a vehicle for moral responsibility and anti-consumption, Journal of Business Research, 2026.
- The emergence of cause-oriented influencers, conceptualizing de-influencing on TikTok, Journal of Business Research, 2025.
Social media observations discussed in this article are anecdotal and should not be interpreted as evidence of a widespread change in consumer behaviour. They prompted the question explored here, which was then considered against published research into deinfluencing.