I Fell in Love with Threads Because It Is a Marketer’s Field Diary

01. Threads as an Anti-Sterile Environment

On Instagram, we learned very quickly to look at a person as a composition. Interior, trip, clothes, breakfast, workout, child, work, book, jewellery. Even when a creator tries to be “authentic,” the platform’s visual logic still rewards selection: whatever can be shown, styled, packaged and fitted into a recognisable version of the self.

Threads works differently. Text is cheaper than an image — not financially, but in terms of the internal threshold for publishing. To write, “I think something was being sprayed in the sky today,” you do not need to arrange a shoot, choose the lighting or wonder whether it fits the grid. A thought appears — and almost immediately becomes public.

By 2026, this is no longer a small experimental service: Meta* reported that Threads had reached 500 million monthly active users. At the same time, the company has been steadily strengthening feed personalisation. Topic-based communities, Dear Algo, Your Algo and other tools allow the platform to gather the conversations that interest each user with increasing precision. My own feed is therefore predictably filled with the UAE, marketing, fashion, people from Russia and the subjects I respond to most often.

This brings us to the first important caveat: Threads does not show me “what people in general think.” It shows me a personalised cross-section. It is not a representative study of society and cannot replace a quantitative sample. But as a way of observing language, anxieties, arguments, everyday theories and living turns of phrase, it is extraordinarily useful.

A marketer must not confuse these two things. A social feed is poor sociology, but often magnificent ethnography.

02. What Looks Marginal May Be Part of Your Market

Over the past few weeks, I have repeatedly come across discussions of so-called chemtrails: people look at aircraft condensation trails and interpret them as the spraying of substances intended to control the population, damage health or spread disease. Within this worldview, ordinary seasonal infections can easily become confirmation of the theory.

A boundary needs to be drawn immediately: there is no scientific basis for treating ordinary aircraft contrails as covert chemical spraying. But for a marketer, the interesting point is not the argument about atmospheric physics. It is the existence of this worldview — and the fact that the person who holds it does not necessarily resemble a caricatured “internet madman.”

Research into conspiracy beliefs has consistently shown that they do not belong to one specific social type. In a major 2024 Nature Communications study, the authors compared self-reports from 2,506 X users with 7.7 million of their real social-media interactions. Support for conspiracy narratives was associated with a range of factors, including a tendency to accept false information; at the same time, the behaviour could not be reduced to a simple profile based on age, education or a single political position.

This is an uncomfortable idea for marketing. We like to assume that a certain level of education, income, professional status or cultural consumption automatically implies a particular way of reasoning. It does not.

A person can be highly skilled in a complex professional field and at the same time construct an everyday explanation of an epidemic around an entirely unscientific hypothesis. They may understand art deeply and still trust a dubious Telegram channel. They may choose evidence-based medicine for their child and homeopathy for themselves. Human beliefs are not required to form a single coherent philosophical system.

For a brand, this means psychographics matter more than attractive demographics — but psychographics cannot be turned into yet another tidy label either.

03. Plague, the Four Horsemen and the Mechanism That Turns an Event into a Myth

In early October, the Russian information environment produced another story that illustrates this mechanism perfectly. After an employee of the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute died, reports emerged of a possible plague infection. The story quickly became alarming: quarantine measures, contradictory reports and discussion of possible contact with the pathogen. Yet at the time of publication, plague had not been officially confirmed as the cause of death. Rospotrebnadzor reported pneumonia of unknown aetiology and said that no plague microorganisms had been detected.

But social media is rarely satisfied with the phrase “the data is being clarified.” Uncertainty almost always demands a plot.

On Threads, I watched a mythology of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” begin to assemble around the news: two have already arrived, people joked, and now we are waiting for the others. Formally, it is a joke, a meme, an anxious exaggeration. Yet forms like these reveal how a person processes a difficult reality. They transform a set of disconnected events into a narrative containing sequence, meaning and a sense of control: if what is happening can be named, it somehow becomes easier to endure.

This is fundamental for marketing. A customer also rarely perceives a brand as a set of objective attributes. They infer intentions. Why did the company raise its price? Why did it change the packaging? Why did it discontinue the product? Why is the founder silent? Why is this influencer suddenly praising this particular brand?

Research in the Journal of Business Research shows that conspiratorial interpretations of a brand’s intentions reduce trust and purchase intention. When a person begins to see hidden manipulation behind a company’s actions, the brand is perceived as more Machiavellian. In other words, trust in brands now exists in the same information environment in which people interpret news, authority, medicine and technology.

When institutions are not trusted, a brand does not acquire immunity simply because it has a beautiful visual identity and a good tone of voice.

04. The Most Powerful Thread Was Not About Conspiracy Theories

What affected me most, however, was a different thread. People were talking about their mental states and diagnoses: bipolar disorder, depressive episodes, personality disorders, periods of hospitalisation, therapy and medication. Not as a sensation and not necessarily as a “story of overcoming.” Sometimes simply: this exists in my life.

These were ordinary, interesting, beautiful, working people. Some are raising children, some building careers; some make jokes, go on dates, renovate their homes, argue with their bosses, choose holidays and buy clothes. Illness does not erase the rest of a biography.

What felt important to me was precisely this sense of the scale of human diversity. In marketing segmentation, a person often exists only through the part of themselves that is useful to the brand: “young mother,” “premium customer,” “entrepreneur,” “Gen Z.” Public conversations about mental health dismantled another such illusion for me. Behind any category lies a multitude of invisible circumstances that affect attention, money, impulsivity, fatigue, the need for control and responses to communication — but do not give us the right to turn a diagnosis automatically into a marketing variable.

This is where an important ethical boundary lies. For a marketer, knowledge of human vulnerability should increase caution, not the desire to press on that vulnerability more precisely.

Public disclosure about mental health can indeed reduce stigma and broaden society’s understanding of what people with mental disorders look like. But that does not mean a marketing team should diagnose an audience from its posts or build communication around exploiting anxiety. Observe — yes. Understand better — yes. Conclude that “people with bipolar disorder should be sold to like this” — no.

05. Why a Sterile Instagram Is Dangerous Specifically for Marketers

The problem is not Instagram as such. The problem begins when an aesthetically selected environment becomes our model of society.

After several years spent looking mainly at beautifully curated accounts, it is easy to start believing that the customer also thinks beautifully. That they choose values consistently. That their purchases reflect their worldview. That someone who talks about sustainability necessarily lives sustainably; someone who buys luxury understands cultural codes; someone who reads psychotherapists approaches medicine rationally; someone who supports local producers with their money does so for ideological reasons.

In practice, the same person constantly switches between different systems of motivation.

They may economise on a basic item and impulsively buy an expensive bag an hour later. Choose cosmetics on the basis of scientific studies and supplements on a friend’s recommendation. Fear corporate surveillance while giving an app access to their entire address book. Claim to hate advertising and then buy something after its twentieth unobtrusive appearance in influencers’ feeds.

This is not a defect in the customer. This is the customer.

Marketing sometimes becomes excessively attached to coherence. We want the audience to have one motivation, one pain point, one insight and one objection. A real person is worse for a presentation and better for life.

06. What Threads Actually Gives a Marketer

I would not use Threads as a source of numbers without external verification. But I increasingly use it as an early sensor.

First, it gives us language. People formulate a problem in their own words rather than answering a focus-group moderator’s question. You can see which word they use to name a phenomenon, what they consider obvious, where they joke, what embarrasses them and at which point they begin to become angry.

Second, it reveals weak signals. One post proves nothing. Dozens of similar posts over several weeks already suggest a subject worth testing through research: a shift in attitudes to price, fatigue with influencers, a new fear, a new norm, a suddenly fashionable service or irritation with a particular mechanism.

Third, it provides a map of contradictions. Not only “what people like,” but what provokes disagreement within the same audience. For strategy, this is often more useful than an average opinion.

Fourth, it reminds us of environments of trust. A 2024 study of 848 adults showed that people with different levels of institutional trust and conspiracy belief respond differently to the same controversial content depending on who is speaking: a politician, a doctor or an ordinary person. For a brand, this is a direct signal: the source of a message can be no less important than the message itself.

Finally, it allows us to see what brand trackers do not capture. A sense of injustice. Fatigue. Shame. Envy. Distrust of experts. The conviction that “we are being deceived again.” The need to belong to the group of those who have “worked out how everything really functions.” These emotional structures can suddenly prove stronger than a rational value proposition.

07. Social Listening Is Not Reading Comments with a Notebook

After a text like this, there is a temptation to say: excellent, then the SMM team should read Threads every day. But useful social listening is more complicated than that.

I would divide it into three levels.

The first is observation. We record recurring themes, turns of phrase, memes, irritants, arguments and unexpected product-use scenarios. At this stage, we do not declare anything a trend.

The second is verification. We check whether the signal appears in other environments: search queries, reviews, marketplaces, Telegram, Reddit, support calls, interviews and quantitative data. And we must ask: is this truly a new tendency, or did the algorithm simply decide one day to show it specifically to us?

The third is strategic interpretation. Only here do we ask: does this affect the product, communication, service, reputational risk or customer experience?

To me, this is what mature work with social media looks like. Do not turn a random thread into “the insight of a generation,” but do not dismiss it merely because it looks strange.

A weak signal is not evidence. It is a reason to formulate the next question correctly.

08. The Customer Portrait Nobody Would Put in a Brand Book

Now let us simply imagine the customer of any brand.

Suppose he is 36. He lives in a large city, earns well, travels, buys premium cosmetics, loves beautiful tableware and reads contemporary media. In conventional segmentation, we already have a clear profile card.

Now add that he is convinced some aeroplanes spray substances to control the population. He fears official medicine but places enormous trust in one particular blogger. Someone close to him is experiencing a severe depressive episode. He is irritated by rising prices. He believes large corporations conceal the truth. At the same time, he likes advanced technology and is willing to pay more for a brand that feels “human.”

This is no longer such a convenient persona.

But this is exactly where real marketing begins. We are forced to stop asking only “what can we sell him?” and begin asking: how does this person make decisions? Whom does he trust? What does he regard as evidence? What looks like manipulation to him? How does he explain a price to himself? How does he react to an expert tone? What does he feel when a brand is too polished and infallible?

In an age of widespread distrust, sterility can itself look suspicious. Communication that is excessively perfect sometimes feels artificial rather than premium. Human specificity — acknowledging limitations, explaining the origin of a decision, answering an uncomfortable question transparently — can become a competitive advantage.

09. What Brands Definitely Should Not Do

It would be easy to draw the wrong conclusion from all this and begin romanticising “authenticity”: we should urgently speak more simply, swear, write like users and discuss conspiracy theories. No.

First: do not mimic the audience’s beliefs when they are false or dangerous. The desire to “be on the same wavelength” does not make disinformation safer.

Second: do not use mental disorders, fears, loneliness or anxiety as hidden levers of influence. Better knowledge of people increases a brand’s responsibility.

Third: do not confuse volume with prevalence. A conspiratorial post with ten thousand comments still does not prove that the majority thinks this way.

Fourth: do not turn social listening into a hunt for every new micro-topic. Strategy differs from reactive content because it knows not only how to notice a signal, but also how to assess its significance.

And fifth: do not despise people for being illogical. Condescending marketing almost always understands its customer poorly.

10. We Have Spent Too Long Studying the Audience in a Sterile Room

That is probably why I like Threads so much at the moment.

It constantly ruins the beautiful picture of the world. It shows that people are smarter and stranger than our segments. That radically different systems of trust hide behind the same income. That a person with a serious diagnosis is not an “audience type,” but an ordinary person with a job, taste and plans. That myth can coexist with education. That irony sits alongside fear. That outward modernity guarantees nothing about a person’s inner picture of the world.

A marketer benefits from regularly encountering a reality that does not fit inside their own feed.

Not in order to treat every comment as truth. And not in order to accept every point of view. But to remember: the market is not a collection of beautiful avatars or a set of tidy personas. It is millions of people, each simultaneously rational and irrational, consistent and contradictory, informed and vulnerable to misconceptions.

And perhaps one of the most important skills for a marketer today is not simply learning to target a person better, but learning to withstand their complexity.

Because a customer who does not fit your audience portrait does not stop being your customer. It is the portrait that stops being good enough.

Practical Conclusion: Five Questions for Your Team

• Which beliefs, fears and forms of distrust in our audience do we fail to see because we ourselves live inside an overly homogeneous information bubble?

• Which conclusions about the customer do we treat as facts even though they are actually based on our professional environment, Instagram subscriptions and the team’s personal social circle?

• Do we have a social-listening system that distinguishes a weak signal from a trend and always requires verification?

• Does our communication explain the brand’s decisions — price, composition, product origin and changes — well enough, or does it leave a vacuum that the customer fills with a theory of their own?

• Do we use our knowledge of people’s anxieties and vulnerabilities to provide better service and greater clarity — or only to increase conversion?