All it takes is opening your phone to enter a parallel world. One influencer is fighting with his wife, another is filming his wife giving birth, a third is selling you a product between pieces of marriage advice, while a fourth turns her divorce into a celebration. Feuds, infidelity, scandals, cars, handbags, children, tears, and apologies. Everything can be filmed, and everything can be sold.

Then a video appears of a man beating his pregnant wife.

The video itself becomes “content.” It is reposted, cut into clips, and commented on. Some people begin putting the woman on trial: What did she do? Why did she stay? Is she exploiting what happened? What will she say? How will he respond?

This is how footage of the assault on Shorouk became another episode in the long-running story audiences have been following about her life with George Deeb, better known as “Dr. Food.” But the problem here is much bigger than Shorouk and Dr. Food. It is also bigger than the question of which one we like or which one we believe.

Shorouk and her content can be criticized, as can the spectacle that accompanied her marriage and divorce. No one needs to defend her or turn her into a heroine. But a man who beats his wife is an abuser. That is not a matter of taste, nor does it depend on what anyone thinks of her personality.

The more disturbing question is this: How did we reach a point where even violence can become part of the show?

For years, it was easy to mock Lebanon’s influencer world as a space of triviality and exhibitionism. But perhaps we were wrong to dismiss it as merely trivial.

Because when triviality attracts millions of followers, drives advertising revenue, determines what people watch and talk about, and offers them daily models of love, marriage, money, the body, success, masculinity, and femininity, it is no longer merely trivial. It becomes a form of power.

The problem with Lebanon’s influencer scene today is not that it has become unbearably ridiculous.

The problem is that we failed to notice how dangerous it could be until we had all become part of its audience.

An Industry That Sells More Than Products

An influencer’s power does not come solely from the number of followers they have. Media studies have long identified what is known as a “parasocial relationship,” the feeling that a follower personally knows a media personality or influencer, even though the relationship effectively runs only one way. This is more than a theoretical concept.

In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology involving 500 adolescents between the ages of 10 to 19, researchers found that factors such as perceived similarity to an influencer, trust, attractiveness, and the entertainment value of their content were associated with stronger parasocial relationships. More importantly, the strength of these relationships was associated with greater materialistic tendencies and a stronger intention to purchase products promoted by influencers.

Another study published in 2024 reached a similar conclusion. The authenticity audiences attribute to influencers, their sense of similarity to them, and the informational value of their content can strengthen parasocial relationships, which in turn influence perceptions of brand credibility and purchase intentions.

This helps explain why personal life itself has become such a fundamental part of the influencer economy.

Influencers do not simply want you to watch an advertisement. They want you to know what they eat, where they sleep, whom they love, when they got married, how they announced a pregnancy, what they bought for their child, where they traveled, and why they fought with their partner.

The more audiences feel they “know” them, the more valuable that relationship becomes, and the more easily it can later be converted into views, influence, or money.

A study involving 433 participants found that influencers’ intimate disclosures about their personal lives can increase consumers’ intentions to purchase the products they promote. It also found that parasocial relationships had a greater effect on consumers’ behavioral intentions than the source’s credibility.

In other words, exposing one’s private life is not always merely a side effect of fame. It can be part of its economic model.

When Life Becomes a Product

This helps us understand something else about Lebanon’s influencer scene.

Marriage is not simply marriage. It is content.

Pregnancy is content.

A gender reveal party is content.

Childbirth is content.

A fight is content.

Reconciliation is content.

Infidelity is content.

And divorce, naturally, is content too.

Every stage opens the door to advertising, views, engagement, interviews, and reposts. The problem begins when maintaining the audience’s attention becomes a daily job. The platform economy does not necessarily reward those who are the most knowledgeable or measured. It rewards whatever makes users stop, watch, and engage.

That is where the competition to escalate begins.

What was shocking yesterday becomes ordinary today. What was private becomes publishable. What once required ethical boundaries becomes an opportunity to “trend.”

The question is no longer: What do you have to say?

It is: What are you willing to do to stop the audience from looking at someone else?

Outrage Is Its Own Reward

This is not merely an impression of how social media works. In a large study published in Science Advances, researchers analyzed 12.7 million tweets from more than 7,000 users and conducted behavioral experiments. They found that receiving positive social feedback after expressing moral outrage increased the likelihood that users would express that outrage again.

In other words, users learn what kind of content their audience rewards, then reproduce it.

Even more strikingly, another study examining “moral panics” on social media drew on eight studies that used data from hundreds of thousands of posts and experiments involving roughly 1,500 participants. It concluded that simply perceiving content as viral can increase people’s sense of the severity of what they are seeing and encourage greater expressions of outrage.

This creates an almost perfect cycle for platforms. Someone does something provocative. The audience becomes outraged, comments, and shares. The content spreads further. The person becomes more famous and learns that provocation works. Then they need another dose of it.

Even hatred becomes capital. The audience does not have to love you for you to succeed. It only has to be unable to ignore you.

From Selling Products to Selling a Way of Life

But the danger is not limited to what we buy. Influencers are not merely selling restaurants, cosmetics, or phones. They constantly present images of what success, beauty, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, masculinity, femininity, and wealth are supposed to look like.

This becomes particularly sensitive when a significant portion of the audience is teenagers and young people.

The study of 500 adolescents found not only an association between parasocial relationships and purchase intentions, but also a link between those relationships and higher levels of materialism. In other words, they were associated with placing greater importance on money and possessions as measures of success and happiness.

In a country like Lebanon, this contradiction becomes especially stark.

For years, the country has been living through a severe economic and social crisis. At the same time, its small screens continuously display a parallel world of cars, handbags, travel, restaurants, gifts, lavish weddings, and luxury homes.

The problem is not that a wealthy person displays their wealth. This daily spectacle gradually becomes one of the standards by which audiences learn what “success” is supposed to look like.

When Violence Becomes Spectacle

Then we reach the most dangerous point.

If relationships, pregnancy, marriage, and divorce can all become content, what happens when violence enters the picture?

This is what makes the case of Shorouk and Dr. Food significant beyond the two individuals themselves.

The footage showing a physical assault did not remain simply evidence of violent behavior. It was immediately absorbed into the same attention economy. It was reposted. It was cut into clips. People commented on it. It was used in other videos and became part of debates about both parties.

A moment that should have prompted a discussion about domestic violence became yet another piece of material in the “Shorouk and Dr. Food story.”

This is where an extremely dangerous transformation takes place.

Violence becomes entertainment.

The victim becomes a character.

The abuser becomes a character.

And the audience waits for the next episode.

The Problem Is Not the “Triviality” of Influencers

It may be comforting to end the discussion by simply calling these people “trivial.” But doing so allows us to avoid the harder question.

How did they become this powerful? Who follows them? Who advertises with them? Who hosts them? Who turns their disputes into news? And who gives them, every single day, the most valuable currency in the digital economy: attention?

Lebanon does not need morality police deciding what people should or should not publish. Nor should we decide who “deserves” fame.

People have the right to produce ridiculous content, and others have the right to watch it.

But we need to stop treating this industry as inconsequential simply because it looks absurd.

Research tells us something far more complicated. Followers can form genuine psychological bonds with people they do not actually know. Those relationships can influence their consumer behavior and their attitudes toward money. At the same time, the structure of social platforms rewards content that generates engagement and emotional reactions, teaching creators to repeat whatever captures attention.

At that point, this is no longer simply about a group of people displaying their lives on camera.

We are looking at an industry that produces values, social models, and behaviors, and commands audiences in the millions, without necessarily assuming any responsibility proportionate to that power.

That is why the question raised by the Shorouk and Dr. Food case may be less sensational than the details of their marriage and divorce, but it is far more important:

What happens to a society when its public life becomes hostage to people who need to offer nothing more than their continuous ability to keep us staring at the screen?

And when a video of a man beating his pregnant wife becomes just another “trend,” the problem is no longer the influencer alone.

The problem is the system that has learned how to turn everything, even violence, into content.