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Is there such a thing as being too attractive? For fitness influencers, it turns out there might be. Contrary to popular belief, new research suggests that being too good-looking can actually be a disadvantage, particularly in the online fitness space. The study, coauthored by researchers at the University of Dayton and University of Oregon, found that the more attractive the influencer, the lower the engagement they received on their social media posts. The reason? It all comes down to a sense of relatability, and what researchers have termed the beauty backfire effect.” In the study, researchers showed 299 U.S. adults mock Instagram posts featuring a highly attractive female fitness influencer, a moderately attractive one, or a text-only control. The halo effect and pretty privilege are both widely studied phenomena where peoples good looks often work to their advantage. Yet the highly attractive influencer scored lowest on both relatability and engagement. Participants also reported a dip in self-esteem after viewing her post. The moderately attractive influencer, on the other hand, boosted participants confidence. It makes sense. When attempting to conjure up motivation to get off the sofa and go to the gym, scrolling through posts of rock-hard abs and fit-fluencers barely breaking a sweat can sometimes have the opposite effect. Researchers also linked this to social comparison theory. We are all guilty of comparing ourselves to others. Sometimes that comparison can be motivating, other times it can be discouraging. If a fitness influencer is too attractive, the body ideal they are selling no longer feels attainable. In a follow-up study, researchers found that highly attractive female fitness influencers faced stronger backlash than equally attractive men. This backfire effect is also most apparent in the fitness space. When the same experiment was conducted with finance influencers, appearance didnt have as much of an impact. Relatability is often an influencers most valuable currency. Social media has evolved from overly polished posts and curated feeds to a focus on authenticity. Today, people gravitate toward influencers with day jobs, tuning in to watch them go about their normal lives, rather than mega-influencers partying with celebrities or jet-setting every other week whose lives feels out of reachor out of touch. The last study backs this up. While the beauty backfire effect can undermine influencers trying to grow their followings, its not unavoidable. If those deemed highly attractive pair their posts with modest captions, talking about their struggles or insecurities, the relatability gap closes. If theyre boastful or adopt self-congratulatory language, the gap widens again. If you’re having trouble racking up the likes on social media, it could just be that you’re too good-looking.
Category:
E-Commerce
On July 29, 2025, at 9:45 a.m., Christine Ressy was supposed to be undergoing surgery to remove kidney stones. Instead, Ressy, a 49-year-old hairdresser in New York City, found herself holding back tears in the waiting room of a Manhattan hospital. Unless she paid half of her $10,933 bill prior to surgery, her doctor simply could not operate, she had been told. Because Ressy was uninsured, she had hoped to receive a cash-pay discount or find some other way to negotiate costs. She wanted to see an itemized receipt after her surgery before paying up, and had prepared a $500 cash deposit. She had done all this on the advice of her most trusted advocate: ChatGPT. Ressy’s conversations with ChatGPT about the cost of her surgery spanned more than 28,000 words. The platform assured her that she was allowed to push back against medical cost estimates, offering scripts for phone calls and email drafts to send billing departments. In the hospital, Ressy messaged ChatGPT again. “Im crying beyond tears,” she wrote. She was willing to pay, but did not want to do so upfront. The staff is “pressuring me,” she said. What should she do? “You are not the problem here,” ChatGPT responded, sending Ressy a yellow heart emoji. Ressy was simply a “patient asking to be treated fairly,” the AI platform said. “They are pressuring you at your most vulnerableand that is wrong.” Ressy went to the check-in desk and repeated a new ChatGPT script: This time, she wanted documentation that she had, as instructed, arrived two hours early for surgery, had offered a good faith deposit, and that the hospital would not be admitting her. One of the medical billers overheard Ressy, then mentioned the phrase “charity care.” Ressy was previously told on the phone that she made too much to qualify for any financial assistance. Now, the biller brought Ressy to the billing office and gave her a document to sign. Two hours after her scheduled appointment, Ressy went into surgery. Three months later, the only money Ressy has paid is the $500 she brought as a deposit. She never received a bill for her surgery, and she is currently negotiating the cost of her anesthesia. “I didn’t know I had any of these options,” Ressy tells Fast Company. “ChatGPT said it’s legal, it’s necessary, and it’s expected to negotiateI didn’t know that.” Ressy is one of a growing number of people using ChatGPT and other AI tools to untangle the convoluted finances of the American healthcare system. As insurers invest in artificial intelligence, many patients feel the system is increasingly lacking in humanity. A ProPublica report found that Cigna denied 300,000 requests over a two-month period in 2023, with physicians spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each case. Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, and Humana are all facing class-action lawsuits that allege the insurers’ AI models denied patients lifesaving care, with denials that ran counter to doctors’ recommendations. Patients often are informed of these denials in confusing form letters that leave patients scrambling mere daysor even hoursbefore scheduled treatments. Now, thousands of patients are using platforms to appeal rejected claims, according to Alicia Graham, the CEO of AI startup Claimable. Others, like Ressy, are asking for scripts to help them negotiate the cost of care. Jessica Cunningham, a mother of four and content creator in Southern California, tells Fast Company she runs all of her family’s hospital bills through ChatGPT to make sure they are not being overcharged. In a confounding system, seemingly controlled by bots and byzantine policies, AI can feel like a lifeline. “It makes me feel like I have the smartest person in the world looking out for me,” Gordon says. “They don’t know what to do next” With its opaque pricing and convoluted policies, it’s easy to feel confused by the American healthcare system. A Gallup poll found that just 17% of Americans are aware of the cost of healthcare procedures before receiving care. Trying to navigate the medical system is an exhausting process, with more than 80% of patients and caregivers telling the Patient Insight Institute that they spent five or more hours a week on administrative tasks. Eighteen percent said they spent “too many hours to count.” Then there is the financial burden: according to a 2022 survey, four in ten Americans are in medical debt. Erin Bradshaw, the executive vice president of the Patient Advocacy Foundation, says that by the time people reach out to the nonprofit, they are already overwhelmed. Most are not aware that many hospitals are open to negotiating costs, nor that hospitals have charitable or discount programs. Even if patients are aware of these options, few know who to contact or what to say. “Often the barrier is they don’t even know what to do next, because you’re dealing with a health crisis to begin with,” Bradshaw says. Decoding hospitals and insurers’ policies can feel like trying to read another language. One of the most powerful aspects of AI platforms is their ability to analyze vast amounts of text nearly instantaneously, with ChatGPT reading hundreds of words in just a few seconds. Often, people simply surrender when the process becomes too overwhelming. If AI platforms can provide support for patientseven if it’s just by scanning documents and suggesting questions to askit can be a great tool for self-advocacy, Bradshaw says. At the same time, Bradshaw and other healthcare experts caution against relying solely on AI. Part of their caution is due to privacy concerns. Artificial intelligence is able to provide better results with more information, so if you upload your bills and medical records, you will likely get more fine-tuned responses. However, this information does not necessarily remain private, as most AI platforms save and collect user data. It’s a stark departure from the privacy-obsessed world of medicine, where Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) demands strict protection of sensitive health information. Also complicating matters is AI platforms’ quirk of offering up occasionally inaccurate information. Different states and healthcare systems have vastly different policies. What works in one siuation might not apply in another, no matter what ChatGPT says. And sometimes, AI platforms are just straight-up wrong. Earlier this year, for example, CNN reported that the FDA’s AI platform was making officials’ jobs more difficult by misrepresenting research and hallucinating nonexistent studies. That does not mean patients should avoid AI altogether. They just need to check its sources, ensuring the original documents actually support platforms’ statements. Alternatively, experts advise seeking out platforms trained specifically to answer these types of questions. Courage to take action In January, the Marshall Allen Project launched the “Marshall Allen Clone,” or MAC. The journalist Marshall Allen, author of “Never Pay the First Bill (And Other Ways to Fight The Healthcare System and Win),” spent his career publishing investigations that helped patients better navigate the healthcare system.After Allen died unexpectedly in 2024, the Marshall Allen Project built MAC, an AI tool trained on Allen’s reporting. The free platform offers personalized answers to people like Ressy struggling to negotiate costs or untangle their options. “The general AI does a really good job of giving people a great starting point,” Andrew Gordon, a healthcare researcher who volunteers with the Marshall Allen Project, tells Fast Company. What sets the MAC apart is its training on the intricacies of the system. When a patient is advocating for themselves for the first time, Gordon says, feeling secure in the accuracy of this advice can be especially powerful. “It’s a North Star, it’s confidence, and it’s courage to take action,” Gordon adds. Other organizations are building even more specific AI tools. Claimable, a startup that launched in 2024 and one of Fast Company‘s 2025 World Changing Ideas, uses AI to generate and submit appeals for patients who have been denied healthcare coverage. The startup is a seed stage company with investors including Walkabout Ventures and Quiet Capital. In less than a year, Claimable has recovered nearly $20 million for patients. Cofounder Alicia Graham tells Fast Company she was drawn to the idea after finding out that up to 99% of people whose claims are denied never file an appeal. Yet, when patients do push back against these denials, a sizable portion up to 80% win, allowing access to treatments previously out of financial reach. To use Claimable, which costs $39.95 per appeal, patients upload their medical and insurance information and answer a handful of questions. (Unlike most AI platforms, Claimable privately protects this information, in compliance with HIPAA.) The platform generates an appeal, drawing on specific insurance policies, local legislation, and relevant medical research. This kind of tedious work can take hours. Claimable creates a letter in minutes, then submits the appeal to the necessary parties. Michael Henry was one of the many patients who did not realize he could appeal rejected claims until he heard about Claimable. Henry, a chief of human resources in Battle Creek, Michigan, had started rationing his GLP-1 shots in late 2024 when Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan announced it would no longer cover medications such as Saxenda, Wegovy, and Zepbound. Henry tried another weight-loss drug, but it did not work. He did not want to pay $1,200 a month. So, instead of injecting himself weekly, Henrywho was previously diagnosed as prediabeticcut his shots to every other week, rationing out his remaining medication. By July, Henry was almost out. He was listening to an episode of “On the Pen,” a podcast about GLP-1s, featuring an interview with Zach Veigulis, another Claimable cofounder. Henry collected his documents and filled out Claimable’s questionnaire. The next day, he got a call from his doctors’ office. He had been approved. Henry picked up his medication later the same day. The United States is still in the early days of patients using AI to navigate the $5 trillion healthcare system. AI is not always the solution. Not every appeal is approved and not every attempt at negotiation succeeds. Artificial intelligence does not address patients’ fundamental concerns about the healthcare system, from its opaque pricing to confusion and suspicion around denials. Americans on all sides of the negotiation seem ready to let AI take the reins when it comes to healthcare. Disturbingly, this could mean that artificial intelligence platforms working with insurers will be financially incentivized to deny patients’ claims. A pilot program that is set to launch in January, for example, will use AI platforms to review prior authorizations of treatments. The platforms will be paid a share of the money saved by rejecting treatment. The ideal future of health insurance would be a system free from concerns of systemic bias, or at least one that does not require superhuman computing capabilities to understand. But as insurers implement new technology, AI can at least offer patients a new tooland a new confidenceto push back against a system that leaves many feeling powerless. “The more people that appeal, the better,” Claimable cofounder Gordon says. “The more people challengeif they feel they’ve been unjustly deniedthe better for everyone.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Every workplace seems to have one. A manager who goes silent for days, then suddenly reappears in the team chat the moment senior leadership checks in. Theyll swoop in to take credit for the work they hadnt touched, and say, “Oh yes, weve been addressing that.” This type of boss shows up when theres an audience, then vanishes as soon as the higher-ups leave. Ive started calling them the performative manager, because thats exactly what they are. The rise of the performative manager To performative managers, actually leading isnt really the point. All they care about is looking like they’re leading. Performative managers care more about optics than outcomes, and their favorite project is themselves. It sounds like something out of a bad office comedy, but its a reality thats become easier to spot as more work happens online. A Resume Genius Report found that 62% of Gen Z employees face high performance expectations but little support, and more than half rarely get feedback from their managers. That’s not a small problem. Gallup research shows that managers shape roughly 70% of how engaged a team feels, which means one bad boss can drag an entire department down. Think your boss might be a performative manager? Here are five signs to watch for: 1. They promise support, then ghost you the second you need it If your boss is great at saying “Im here for you” but never proves it, you might be dealing with a performative manager. They love looking supportive, but rarely follow through. One of my friends, lets call her Sarah, learned this the hard way. During her first one-on-one at a banking firm, her manager said all the right things, such as “If theres a problem, well work through it together.” It sounded reassuring at the time. But when client requests started piling up and Sarah was drowning in email, that same manager was nowhere to be found. Sarah eventually figured things out on her own and sought help from her coworkers instead. What to do: When your manager disappears, get scrappy. Ask teammates for insight, look for past examples, or test a solution yourself. The more resourceful you become, the less youll need to wait around for someone elses “guidance.” 2. They only come to you during performance review season If your boss suddenly remembers you exist right before review season, chances are theyre preparing for their evaluation, not yours. Youll recognize the signs: more one-on-ones, warmer Slack messages, and maybe even a surprise “training session” that conveniently proves how engaged theyve been all along. What to do: Use that sudden burst of attention to your advantage. Bring up projects youve led, the impact youve made, and what kind of support would help you grow next. Document your achievements (and keep them visible) so theres a clear record of your work. If your success makes them uneasy, dont shrink back. Instead, play it smart: share wins in ways that highlight the whole teams progress, for example, mentioning how your idea helped everyone hit a deadline or made a process easier. 3. They repeat your solution verbatim in meetings You share an idea with your manager, and its crickets. Later on, your manager repeats the idea word for word in a meeting, and suddenly its “brilliant.” Its not that they dont hear you. They just save your insight for when it benefits them most. What to do: As tempting as it might be, resist the urge to confront them mid-meeting. Instead, start putting your ideas in writing where you have a clear trail in emails, shared docs, or Slack channels. If your idea suddenly reappears in a meeting, jump in with calm confidence: “Yes, thats exactly what I was exploring earlier, and heres how we could take it further.” Its respectful, direct, and makes it clear that the idea started with you. You might also want to consider looping in higher-ups and collaborators so that it becomes more difficult for anyone else to take credit for your contribution. If you can, build relationships with other managers or team leads who notice your work. Good leaders can spot performative ones, and having someone credible to back you up helps protect your reputation. 4. They never admit they’re wrong My former colleague Dan used to lose his mind over his previous manager. “Hed ask what I thought about a problem,” Dan told me, “then immediately cut me off with, No, thats incorrect, even when I was literally describing the right solution.” Performative managers cant stand being wrong because they see it as a threat to their authority. They prioritize looking competent over actually improving. And when something does go wrong, theyre quick to turn the spotlight elsewhere. If higher-ups are asking questions, that miscommunication or missed deadline suddenly becomes your fault. Over time, this can slip into gaslighting. You might start replaying conversations in your head, trying to figure out if you really missed something. You didnt. What to do: When disagreements come up, reframe your input in neutral terms, like: “Lets test both options and see which one works best.” Staying outcome-focused protects your time and mental health. If your manager pins the blame on you, respond factually and calmly. Reference what you had agreed on or shared: As mentioned in the update last week, I followed the plan we discussed. No one really wins an argument by losing their temper, but you can by keeping receipts. 5. They turn mentoring into a show of ego If “never admitting theyre wrong” is annoying, this is its final form. My friend Sarah called her manager “a walking pop quiz” who acted like everything was already his idea, and “everyone else was just trying to catch up to his galaxy brain.” For Sarah, every one-on-one started the same way: “So, what do you think went wrong here?” followed by a smug Nope, regardless of what she’d say. Performative managers enjoy playing teacher to remind everyone how smart they are. Beneath the surface, its less about teaching and more about control. What to do: Try to make these interactions short and focused. If they interrupt your work with “learning opportunities,” politely acknowledge them, give a brief update on your progress, and find a natural way to end the conversation. You can always wrap things up with a soft exit like, “I need to prep for my next meeting, but Ill send you an update later.” Performative managers rarely fool people for long. The corporate world has no shortage of them, and knowing how to navigate them without losing your sanity wll help you work smarter. Your power move isnt calling them out. Let them perform. The real professionals are too busy getting things done.
Category:
E-Commerce
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