I’m sure none of you can relate to this (haha), but I got sucked down a ‘reel’ rabbit hole the other day on Instagram (or facebook) while waiting for an appointment and it got me thinking about social media and what it’s like to be a consumer these days. It all started with innocent clips of highland cows running down a hill in slow mo, byrdie the octopus playing with legos, random pony videos, the arbitrary random human videos, and it some how ended up with dog training reels popping up almost every other reel (which is fairly atypical because I don’t generally watch many). It was the same handful of content makers in the videos.
So I did a little dive into the ‘trainers’ that were showing up in my reels because I’m a glutton for punishment curious (and my appointment was VERY late so I was waiting in the waiting room).
I’ll be honest, I don’t spend a lot of time looking at content on social media unless I’m looking for something specific or I hear about something interesting (largely because I don’t generally have time). I also don’t spend much time thinking about my social media or building up social media as a revenue source from views/likes/clicks. My social media time is spent posting my business stuff to help people know what’s going on at SJC and creating content focusing on what students are doing at SJC, education about dog training and behavior, and generally having fun (and on Insta sharing my dogs and our adventures).
While I follow other professionals on social media, I’m pretty picky–I follow trainers I know personally, I follow folks I can learn from, I follow folks asking interesting questions, I follow folks who DO stuff and not just say it (loudly, over and over and over again without showing me anything), and I follow people who are showing me that they are doing interesting and creative things with training. Most of the trainers I follow, unless they are backed by a larger organization, do not have tens of thousands of followers.
When I did my brief exploration into the trainers that just kept popping up on my reels, most of them had well over 10,000 followers (some over 100k). None of these trainers held any sort of certifications from independent certifying bodies. None of these trainers mentioned any sort of extensive education in training/behavior or related fields on their websites/profile pages. One of the trainers has had legal problems including having his property raided for non-training but animal related issues and being found guilty of fraud in civil court in animal related lawsuits.
Some of these trainers have social media full of videos of them just talking about inflammatory things or loaded statements with the primary goal (it appeared) of pushing more engagement with the posts (a valid social media for revenue strategy). I noticed that a couple of these trainers simply had very few videos/pictures of themselves training a dog, coaching a student, or even just working an already trained dog–they had tons of videos of them monologuing to the camera. While I’m sure some of them have a successful business outside of social media, some definitely made me wonder if they actually had clients they worked with or were just armchair trainers trying to go viral and get internet famous.
So where is all of this going? Social media and online platforms have been amazing for giving consumers access to more information and different perspectives. Pet owners can get some guidance for dealing with a struggle they may be having, they can see that dogs like theirs can be helped, and maybe find a local professional to seek out for help. Professionals can show off their skills, can share their knowledge, share the successes of their students, and this can give consumers a chance to see them in action all before hiring them. There are are some fabulous benefits of the evolution of social media.
However, it’s also given everyone access to a platform (regardless of their skill, experience, education, or ethics) and it’s easy in this day an age to be swindled by a smooth talker, highly edited videos, or totally fabricated videos. One thing that quite a few of the videos that popped up in my reels had in common was that these folks sounded legit. They used fancy training words, behavior jargon, and vocabulary with a confidence (including their body language) that could easily convince people of their prowess–whether or not what they said actually made any sense.
Sometimes these trainers used words, that created sentences, that created thoughts that actually made sense as a thought (even if the content of those thoughts was not actually accurate) and sometimes they spewed lots of words, jargon, and vocab terms in things that resemble sentences in cadence and might sound smart but that don’t actually make any sense when we look at them. Even though the words failed to make a cohesive sentence, they sounded sexy and flashy when saying them and coupled with the very confident delivery and body language it’s easy to be swindled.
So, remember my good friends, as you navigate social media take what you see with a grain of salt. Do your own investigating and remember that if you see on the internet/social media it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true (or right, or ethical, or wise, or without risk).