We Still Want It

Sometimes I scroll through feeds and see an ad for a supplement that’s supposed to improve focus. I’ve developed supplements myself. Or a coaching programme that changes everything in six weeks. I’ve done those too. More than once. Or something about a bio-hack that optimises sleep. I’ve been there too. I knew all of it.

Not the product, but the mechanism behind it.

A promise that sounds simple. A quick solution you can just buy. And always someone who has used it, rated it with five stars and confirmed: it works. A story that is too good. So why check it or question it?

I sold exactly this. A Power Balance silicone wristband with a hologram that was supposed to improve your balance. Whether the effect was placebo, I didn’t ask for a long time. I didn’t even know. But the demand was real. Millions of people wanted it. Not because they were stupid, but because they needed something, and because the promise hit exactly the right nerve: more strength and better balance. The brand name alone said it loud and clear. Clear enough to offer hope, subtle enough to be credible.

This mechanism hasn’t disappeared. It went digital.

Today I see it in supplements that advertise effects nobody really checks. In coaching offers that promise transformation without saying what that actually means. Or in bio-hacking gadgets that deliver data that feels important but changes absolutely nothing. You can spin this out endlessly, all the way to political narratives that reduce complex problems to a personified enemy, because that’s easier than the truth and distracts from the rest of the mudslinging.

All of this mostly feels clumsy and obviously staged, but the core is always the same. Someone has a problem and someone else has the solution. The solution sounds simple. But between the problem and the solution there is a gap, filled with good-faith belief. No evidence. Just belief.

Placebo isn’t a dirty word. It’s a scientifically documented effect. Believing in a result produces a result. That isn’t a lie, it’s plain biology. The problem starts where someone uses this effect to their advantage and then acts as if the effect comes from the product and not from the head of the buyer.

I’ve done that myself. And through it I got to know the boundary and overlooked, or rather crossed, the moment of crossing. It wasn’t even a particularly dramatic moment. But from that point on I saw that asking the question brings an answer, and I got into the habit of skipping the question. Because there was no answer. At least none that could explain the phenomenon.

What concerns me today isn’t the past, but the now. I watch people spend a lot of money on supplements because a guy with a six-pack said in a podcast that it’s life-changing. I’ve also spent a lot of money on supplements myself. And as a seller I learned to work with feelings, because facts are much harder to sell.

The patterns are always the same. Only the medium has changed. Instead of trade fairs and newspapers, it’s now podcasts and social media. Instead of athletes wearing a wristband, it’s influencers with sponsored links in the bio. But the hunger is the same. The hunger for something that helps, that makes you better, and is above all easy, where you don’t have to put in effort but can simply buy it without thinking much about it.

And I understand this hunger. Because as I said, I’m the same. When I’m tired, I reach for coffee. When the world gets too complicated, I also prefer the simple explanation, because on top of everything else the complicated scares me. Nobody is immune to that.

I’ve practised it myself. I know it from the inside. I’ve sat in meetings where the nuanced wording was debated, where an effect is suggested so clearly that the customer buys right away, but the advertising law for medicinal products hasn’t yet turned red. It was never about whether something was true, but about how to say it so that it feels true. And if a push was needed to overcome the remaining doubts, an influencer or a testimonial was slotted in.

As I said, the question was never whether it’s true. The truth was replaced by the question of whether enough people believe it, so that the others follow. It worked back then just as it does today. Testimonials are now called influencers, and the channels are called “Social”.

I’m not telling this as a warning. Warnings don’t help when the hunger is big enough. I tell it because I know it well enough from the inside and because I just have to say it. Not to prevent it in the future, but to decide more consciously when to play along. And above all, where the next boundary lies that I don’t want to cross again.

We want to believe. It’s human. It was always human, even when I sold wristbands with a hologram inside. It’s human when someone orders a supplement today. The question isn’t whether we believe. The question is what we do with the belief, whether we test it, whether we question it, or whether we just click “buy” and hope that this time it’s true.

I don’t have a solution for that. I only have the experience that it works again and again. With me, with others, everywhere.