The collapse of Athletic Greens reveals the broken and even harmful nature of influencer marketing.
Influencers build trust with their followers and then, with a little sleight of hand, leverage that trust for personal financial gain. It's a misaligned relationship.
Is it a trusted friendship, or is the follower the actual product? Is the recommendation made because the product is high quality and fairly priced, or because it pays the highest commissions? How is the follower to know?
These blurred lines invite questionable conduct and erode trust between people, leaving us all trusting each other less, which is detrimental to society.
The problem isn't people working to make money; the issue lies in the ambiguity and lack of transparency.
The good news is that Athletic Greens' influencer-driven money-making scheme has been exposed, becoming a cautionary tale, much like Theranos, helping us identify similar schemes earlier on.
The ending Wano deserved
One piece episode 1084 utilizes what was skipped in the source in SOULFUL fashion, giving the arc a much more satisfactory feel and an earned farewell, each strawhat interaction with their closest Wano citizen was wholesome from Luffy and Tama, Zoro and hyori, Sanji and Osome, Franky..etc.. even the death of the 2 scabbards was given more value, overall it felt like a needed canon episode rather than filler, the anime continued to elevate this arc till the very end