The Anti-Influencer Review: What I'd Tell My Best Friend Before They Spend €3,000

The Conversation We Never Have

My friend called last week. She wanted to buy a new laptop. She’d been watching YouTube reviews for three days. She was more confused than when she started.

“Everyone says something different,” she told me. “And they all have affiliate links in the description.”

She asked what I’d actually recommend. Not what I’d write for an audience. Not what I’d say if a brand was watching. What I’d tell her, as a friend, knowing she was about to spend €3,000.

That conversation lasted two hours. It was nothing like the reviews she’d been watching.

This article is an attempt to recreate that conversation. The things I’d actually say to someone I care about before they make a major tech purchase. No optimization for engagement. No affiliate considerations. No performance.

Just the truth, as best as I can offer it.

Why Professional Reviews Fail You

Professional reviewers aren’t lying to you. Most are genuinely trying to be helpful. But their incentives are misaligned with yours in ways that matter.

They need to produce content regularly. A reviewer who publishes one article per month doesn’t survive in the attention economy. This creates pressure to review products quickly—too quickly to know how they hold up over time.

They receive products for free. This seems minor, but it changes psychology. When something costs you nothing, you evaluate it differently than when you sacrificed money for it. The experience of spending €3,000 and hoping you made the right choice is absent from their evaluation.

They have relationships with manufacturers. Even reviewers who maintain editorial independence still depend on review samples. Consistently negative coverage means future products go to competitors. This doesn’t have to be conscious corruption—subtle self-censorship is enough.

They’re competing for attention. Reviews that say “this is fine, probably not worth upgrading from what you have” don’t generate clicks. Dramatic takes, strong opinions, and superlatives get shared. The attention economy rewards extremity.

They’re often not their own target audience. A tech reviewer might evaluate a laptop for video editing when they actually spend most of their time reviewing laptops. Their use case isn’t your use case. Their priorities aren’t your priorities.

None of this means reviews are worthless. They contain useful information. But they’re written for audiences, not friends. The friend conversation is different.

What I Actually Said About Laptops

Let me reconstruct what I told my friend about laptops, because it’s nothing like the reviews she’d been watching.

First question: Why do you think you need a new laptop?

She wasn’t sure. Her current laptop was three years old. It “felt slow.” She’d seen the new models and they looked better. The standard reasons.

I asked her to be specific about what felt slow. Opening applications? Browsing? Running specific software? “Everything” is never the real answer.

It turned out her laptop was slow primarily because her hard drive was nearly full and she had dozens of browser tabs open constantly. The hardware was fine. Her usage patterns were creating the slowdown.

Second question: What would you do with €3,000 if you didn’t buy a laptop?

This question surprised her. Nobody in the reviews asked this.

Three thousand euros is a lot of money. It could be a vacation. It could be investments. It could be months of financial buffer. The question isn’t just whether a laptop is good—it’s whether a laptop is the best use of that money compared to everything else.

She admitted she’d been thinking about the laptop as an isolated decision. Once we framed it against alternatives, the calculation changed.

Third question: What’s your actual use case?

Her answer: email, web browsing, occasional photo editing, video calls, Netflix.

I pointed out that a €800 laptop would handle this perfectly. The €3,000 laptop she was considering had capabilities she would never use. She was paying for professional video editing performance she didn’t need, for gaming graphics she wouldn’t utilize, for durability she wouldn’t test.

The reviews never told her this because reviews don’t know her use case. They describe what the product can do. They don’t tell you whether you need those capabilities.

Fourth question: Have you considered the €1,200 option?

Mid-range products rarely get featured reviews. They’re not exciting enough. But they’re often the right answer.

The €1,200 laptop I recommended would handle her use case perfectly, last five years easily, and leave €1,800 for other things. It wasn’t the “best” laptop. It was the best laptop for her.

No influencer would make that recommendation because it doesn’t generate content. “Buy the boring mid-range option” doesn’t get views.

The Questions Reviewers Never Ask

Here’s what I ask friends that reviewers never ask audiences:

What are you trying to prove?

This sounds harsh, but it matters. Sometimes expensive purchases are about identity rather than utility. The €3,000 laptop isn’t for doing work—it’s for feeling like someone who does serious work. The professional camera isn’t for taking photos—it’s for feeling like a photographer.

These motivations aren’t invalid. But they should be conscious. If you’re buying status, know you’re buying status. Don’t pretend it’s about specifications.

What happened to your last expensive tech purchase?

Did you use it to its full potential? Or did you buy something capable of 100 and consistently use it at 20? Past behavior predicts future behavior. If your last premium purchase went underutilized, this one probably will too.

Who told you that you need this?

Often, “needs” are manufactured by marketing. You didn’t know you needed a certain feature until an advertisement told you. You didn’t feel your current device was inadequate until reviews compared it unfavorably to the new one.

Tracing the origin of the perceived need often reveals it’s artificial. You’ve been solving problems you don’t actually have.

What would happen if you bought nothing?

Sometimes the answer is: nothing bad would happen. Your current setup is fine. The upgrade solves no real problem. The purchase is consumption, not investment.

This is valid, if you’re honest about it. But many people convince themselves they need what they merely want. The distinction matters for €3,000 decisions.

Method

Here’s my actual method for advising friends on major tech purchases:

Step one: Understand the real problem. Not the stated problem—“I need a new laptop”—but the underlying issue. What’s wrong with the current setup? What would improvement look like? Often the real problem isn’t what they think it is.

Step two: Explore non-purchase solutions. Can the current device be upgraded, repaired, or optimized? Can software changes address the issue? Can workflow adjustments eliminate the need for new hardware?

Step three: Question the budget. The budget someone has in mind is usually influenced by what they’ve seen advertised. It’s rarely based on analysis of what they actually need. Often the appropriate budget is much lower than the aspirational budget.

Step four: Consider opportunity cost. Money spent on tech is money not spent on other things. What are those other things? Are they more or less valuable? This reframing often changes decisions.

Step five: Match capabilities to use case. Identify exactly what capabilities are needed. Find the cheapest product that delivers those capabilities reliably. Ignore capabilities that won’t be used.

Step six: Add durability margin. Buy slightly better than minimum necessary to ensure the product lasts and handles unexpected demands. But don’t overshot into paying for capabilities you’ll never need.

Step seven: Consider the whole cost. Price isn’t just purchase price. Include accessories, software, maintenance, learning curve, and replacement timeline. The expensive option sometimes has lower total cost. Usually it doesn’t.

This methodology isn’t exciting. It doesn’t identify “the best” product. It identifies the right product for a specific person with specific needs and specific constraints.

The Automation Problem

Here’s where this connects to broader concerns about technology and judgment.

The internet has automated product recommendations. AI assistants will suggest products based on your queries. Comparison sites aggregate specifications and prices. Review aggregators synthesize opinions.

These tools seem helpful. They process more information than any human could. They surface options you might not discover otherwise.

But they have systematic blind spots.

They don’t know your actual use case. They know what you say you want, which is often different from what you need.

They don’t understand opportunity cost. They optimize within the category you’re searching, not across all possible uses of your money.

They’re biased toward what’s measurable. Specifications, benchmarks, prices—these can be compared algorithmically. Subjective fit, personal priorities, and contextual factors can’t be.

They amplify popular opinions. Products that get lots of positive reviews get recommended more, creating feedback loops regardless of whether they’re best for you specifically.

The automation makes you feel informed while potentially leading you astray. You’ve consulted tools. You’ve done research. Surely your decision is well-founded.

But the fundamental questions—do I need this, is this the best use of my money, does this match my actual life—require human judgment. The tools can’t answer them because they require understanding context that tools don’t have.

Generative Engine Optimization

There’s an interesting dynamic here for AI-mediated information.

When you ask an AI assistant for product recommendations, it synthesizes available content. Most available content is professional reviews—content created with the incentive problems described above. The AI aggregates biased sources and presents the result as neutral advice.

The friend-to-friend conversation barely exists in training data. It’s not documented. It’s not searchable. The honest “you probably don’t need this” advice doesn’t get published because there’s no business model for it.

AI systems therefore systematically overweight purchase-encouraging content. They reflect the attention economy they were trained on. They’re helpful for comparing options within a category, but unreliable for questioning whether the category is appropriate.

Human judgment matters here in specific ways. The ability to question the premise of the question. The skill of understanding someone’s actual situation, not just their stated preferences. The wisdom to recommend not buying when that’s the best advice.

These are fundamentally human competencies. They require relationship, context, and judgment that automation doesn’t possess.

Automation-aware thinking means recognizing when AI recommendations are likely biased and compensating with human judgment. For major purchases, this means talking to people who know you and have no financial incentive in your decision—the friend conversation, not the content ecosystem.

What I Actually Recommend

If you’re about to spend €3,000 on technology, here’s what I’d tell you as a friend:

Wait two weeks. If you still want it in two weeks, the desire is probably real. If you’ve forgotten about it, the desire was manufactured urgency.

Find someone who owns it and doesn’t benefit from your purchase. Ask them honestly: knowing what you know now, would you buy this again? The answer is often illuminating.

Calculate the per-use cost. €3,000 over five years is €600 per year, or roughly €50 per month. Is this product worth €50 per month to you? Sometimes yes. Often no.

Consider the incremental benefit. You’re not comparing €3,000 to nothing. You’re comparing the €3,000 option to the €1,000 option. What specifically does the extra €2,000 buy you? Is that worth it?

Be honest about your use case. Not your aspirational use case—your actual use case. The one based on how you’ve used technology in the past, not how you imagine using it in the future.

Acknowledge the status element. If part of the motivation is owning premium things, that’s valid. But account for it honestly. Don’t convince yourself you need professional capabilities when you want professional status.

Have the conversation with someone who cares about you, not your purchase. The friend perspective is different from the audience perspective. Find someone who will tell you the uncomfortable truth.

The Things Influencers Can’t Say

There are things I can tell a friend that influencers can’t tell audiences:

“You probably don’t need this.” No content creator builds an audience by telling people to buy less. The whole ecosystem assumes purchases are happening; the only question is which one.

“Your current device is fine.” This ends the engagement. It doesn’t generate clicks or affiliate commissions. It’s the right advice, often, but it has no place in the content economy.

“You’re being influenced by marketing.” Pointing out that desire is manufactured doesn’t win friends among the manufacturers. Reviewers who depend on industry relationships can’t afford this honesty.

“The expensive option is usually wrong.” For most people, mid-range products deliver 90% of the capability at 50% of the price. But mid-range isn’t exciting. It doesn’t justify detailed reviews. It doesn’t generate content.

“The upgrade won’t make you happier.” Research consistently shows that material purchases provide less lasting satisfaction than people expect. New technology creates temporary excitement that fades quickly. This is well-documented but rarely mentioned in product reviews.

These aren’t revolutionary insights. They’re obvious once stated. But they’re systematically absent from the content ecosystem because the content ecosystem isn’t designed for your benefit—it’s designed for engagement.

My Actual Tech Setup

In the spirit of honesty, here’s what I actually use:

A three-year-old mid-range laptop. It handles everything I need. I have no plans to upgrade.

A phone that was mid-range when I bought it two years ago. It makes calls, runs apps, takes decent photos. That’s enough.

Headphones that cost €80. They sound good to me. I’ve never A/B tested them against €500 alternatives because I don’t care about marginal audio improvements.

A mechanical keyboard that was nice but not premium. It works. I’ve stopped thinking about it.

This setup cost perhaps €1,500 total. It serves me perfectly. I mention this because many tech reviewers have setups worth five figures and have lost perspective on what normal people need.

Simon the cat, meanwhile, has zero technology. His needs are food, warmth, and the occasional laser pointer. His satisfaction with life appears higher than most humans’. There might be a lesson there.

The Real Questions

Before you spend €3,000, sit with these questions:

Is this solving a real problem or an imagined one? Many purchases solve problems that were manufactured by the same marketing that sells the solution.

Am I buying capability or identity? Both are valid, but they’re different. Know which you’re doing.

What would a friend who loves me, not my money, advise? Seek that advice. It’s worth more than a hundred reviews.

Will I regret not buying this, or regret buying it? Project forward honestly. Most €3,000 tech purchases generate eventual regret.

What else could I do with this money? Don’t evaluate purchases in isolation. Every euro spent here is a euro not spent elsewhere.

The influencer economy won’t ask you these questions. Asking them is bad for business.

But you should ask them anyway. Not because spending money is wrong, but because spending money wisely requires resisting an entire system designed to encourage spending.

The Advice My Friend Took

At the end of our two-hour conversation, my friend decided not to buy the €3,000 laptop.

She cleaned up her current laptop’s hard drive and closed some browser tabs. It runs fine now.

She put the €3,000 into savings. She’ll buy a new laptop when she actually needs one, probably for €1,200.

This advice cost her nothing. It saved her €3,000. No influencer would have given it, because this advice generates no content, no engagement, and no affiliate revenue.

But it was the right advice. The friend advice. The advice that considers her whole situation, not just her hypothetical purchase.

That’s what I’d tell you, too, if you were my friend. You probably don’t need the expensive thing. Your current setup is probably fine. The upgrade probably won’t make you happier.

I know that’s not what the content ecosystem says. The content ecosystem has different incentives.

But I’m not the content ecosystem. I’m just someone who’s been asked this question by friends, over and over, and has learned that the honest answer is usually “wait” or “don’t” or “get the cheaper one.”

That’s the anti-influencer review. No affiliate links in this conversation. No relationships to protect. No engagement to optimize.

Just the truth, as best as I can tell it.

Spend your money wisely. Or better yet—don’t spend it at all.