Hey guys, I'm new here. I found this site a couple of days ago and have read through all of the Hinch threads, feeling more and more like a mug the longer I read.
I'm pretty embarrassed to say that I was completely fooled by Sophie. Usually I consider myself to be pretty savvy to the realities of instagram influencers, but I truly believed that she was just a girl next door who enjoyed cleaning to help her anxiety and found herself accidentally caught up in a media frenzy. I believed that she was a hairdresser before, that she enjoyed buying cheap bits and bobs on ebay and sharing the bargains (I didn't know there was an ebay partner scheme to earn money with!), that she was a fairly experienced cleaner with new tips for me to try out.
Now I know that she and her husband have a background of working in corporate sales for years (which she mysteriously never mentions to her millions of "friends" - oops, I mean brainwashed followers), that her Instagram rise to popularity was calculated and involved buying adverts and newspaper articles, that she's earning serious cash with every single ebay swipe up (and she posts dozens a day!), and that she only got into cleaning a year ago and stole all of her tips from Facebook groups and other cleaning influencers.
I really want to thank this group for alerting me to the dangers of her tips. I've been struggling with depression for a few years (this is probably why I was so easily taken in by her happy-go-lucky style instagram stories), but she made me feel motivated to go and buy new cleaning products and take more pride in my home again. The day before I discovered this site I had bought a bunch of Zoflora and was planning on using it all over the house like she does, but thanks to you guys I now know how insanely flammable and toxic to animals it is, so I won't be using it.
What I find most disgusting is how her brand is targeting mentally unwell, working class women - aka one of the most vulnerable demographics. I might come across as crazy here, but after reading these threads I truly believe that everything she posts is calculated to appeal to these women, and that her true personality is nothing like this at all. I don't for a second believe that she eats so much junk and unhealthy food, yet stays so slim - I think she posts this because it's similar to the foods her target market purchase, so makes her seem more relatable. When she was staying at a fairly nice hotel for Valentines, she was acting like everything was so posh and amazing (eg mini jam jars, room service), yet she will most likely have been on work trips to similar hotels as part of her old job. I think she was just pretending to be overwhelmed by how "posh" it all was because many of the women in her target market will have never stopped at a fancy hotel, so again it makes her more relatable.
Even the way she speaks is an act. I watched her TV segment from last year, and in it she sounds nothing like the way she does in her stories. She was extremely professional, next to no grammatical slip ups, no stammering or pauses, incredibly confident, and much less of the Essex twang to her voice. Whereas in her stories, again, she presents a more "working class" style of speaking, probably so that her followers feel like she's truly one of them, and that they can trust her.
Most disgusting of all, though, is that Jamie was privately educated (I believe - pretty sure I read that on the previous thread) so clearly had a very comfortable upbringing, and has what is presumably a very well paying job in sales. He has lived a privileged life, and patronisingly greets these working class women that follow Sohpie with a cheery "Hello shoppers!", after the pair of them have rinsed these women for the little money they have. I've seen the screenshots from the Facebook groups of women going into debt because they are being manipulated into stockpiling a narnia and buying an overpriced shark hoover - it truly is the rich robbing the poor. Despicable.
And don't even get me started on the environmental damage she is doing personally, as well as encouraging millions of others to do. This comment is already turning into a novel, so I'd better just stop here, haha. Thanks for helping me see the light, guys.
. Even the ones that no longer get tested on animals and are cruelty free will be affecting pets. 
