Rejecting the “haul” culture of excessive shopping and promoting conscious consuming, the de-influencer movement is going mainstream – here’s why.

In 2019, Diana Wiebe was deep in a social media scroll when she came across an influencer promoting heatless curling rods. “They were rods you could sleep in overnight, and the promise was to wake up with beautiful curls,” she tells the BBC.

It was one of many products she was influenced to buy from TikTok, but like several of the others, including skin creams and facial scrubs, she quickly realised she didn’t need them. “Honestly, the curlers really disrupted my sleep, and I didn’t make it past night one,” she says, adding “my hair is naturally wavy, so I think the curler actually did too much”.