In June I applied to review a wig for a brand on Reddit. I always say when something was gifted to me, and that whole experience changed how I read other people's wig posts.
How can you tell if a wig review was gifted?
You often can't be certain, and I'm not asking you to be paranoid about it. What I do now is mostly boring stuff.
Does the person post about anything else, or is their whole account this one wig? Watch what happens with the awkward follow-up questions, not just the easy ones.
Five polished photos with a one-line caption is a very different post from somebody telling you the cap dug in behind their ear. Real people complain about something. Even about a wig they love, there's usually a bit that annoys them.
And if you ask where they got it and they hand you a link with a tracking code on the end, that tells you something too.
None of it proves anything. All it's done is make me read a bit slower than I used to.
Before you even get to the reviews
The same instincts apply to the ads. The before and after photos in Facebook ads are their own thing to watch (especially when the piece that turns up doesn't match them).
What happened with my own gifted wig, and what I thought of it, is in my Luvme Hair post.
Luvme sent me the wig in that post for free.