This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they’re going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.
I take my feet seriously.
Which was why, in December, I found myself in an office, propping my leg up on a chair as a tech startup CEO used an iPhone to scan my bare tootsies from multiple angles. No, I wasn’t angling to become a saucy Victorian ankle flasher for OnlyFans. I was there to get a set of insoles from Groov, a company that uses the iPhone’s Face ID camera and an AI algorithm to create and print custom shoe inserts.
I was skeptical. Groov’s pitch boils down to personalization. People buy insoles because, let’s face it, even the most comfy shoe doesn’t always fit well. It’s even worse if you’re suffering from flat feet, plantar fasciitis, or a high arch. What makes Groov interesting is you’re creating a 3D model of your foot using tech many people already own. The company then uses AI to optimize the best surface for an individual foot. It’s similar to what a podiatrist would do, but doesn’t entail creating a plaster mold of your foot or proprietary 3D scanners.
Conversely, those $20 over-the-counter Dr. Scholl’s inserts aren’t really made for you. Proper custom orthotics from a podiatrist can cost somewhere between $300 and $800, may require a prescription, and possibly won’t be covered by insurance. (American healthcare! What a treat!) iPhones are everywhere — sorry, no Android compatibility yet — and getting custom inserts from Groov doesn’t require a prescription. A pair of the company’s inserts costs $150 and is also FSA/HSA eligible. Theoretically, this is using tech to get the exact insert for your feet in a cheaper, more accessible way.
On the other hand, products like Groov fall squarely in the realm of the wellness Wild West. These days, influencers peddle everything from dubious health gadgets to unapproved weight loss drugs, promising to fix everything that might ail you. Some of it is (partially) backed by science, some of it purports to improve access to known remedies, and a lot of what gets sold is snake oil. But as far as wellness tech goes, Groov seemed harmless.
When I met with Dan Cataldi, Groov’s founder and CEO, he regaled me with an impassioned speech about how shoe fit hasn’t evolved in ages. Just as society has moved away from custom-tailored clothes to fast fashion, shoes are mass produced in cookie-cutter molds even though everyone’s feet are different. Removable inserts, he says, are really the only way to make mass-produced shoes more comfortable. That’s why, when NBA players give their sneakers to fans, the first thing they do is remove their custom insoles. Cataldi proceeded to then show me a video montage of athletes, including LeBron James, doing just that.
There’s a nugget of truth here. Even so, elite athletes are a notoriously superstitious bunch who’ll do anything to get the teeniest edge. I work out a lot, but I’m no elite athlete. I’m just a gal with two wide feet and fallen arches, prone to calf strain and ill-fitting shoes. Still, I figured that trying Groov was a low-risk experiment in the world of optimization. I’d stick them in my sneakers at CES — a convention where I rack up well over 10,000 steps every day. At best, my feet would hurt less. At worst, I’d end up with a pair of insoles I could have found cheaper at a CVS.
As it turned out, last week was the culmination of a nearly two-year search for the perfect walking shoe. In Vegas, I combined Groov inserts with a new pair of AI browser-recommended New Balance 574 Core. Armed with a 15-pound backpack, I schlepped myself around putrid casinos and show floors, testing taint zappers and investigating wellness gadgets utilizing bodily fluids. No one suspected that I was also conducting my own feet-related wearable experiment.
I regret to inform you that the results were inconclusive but remind me of the most pernicious part of the wellness Wild West: the placebo effect.
On a day where I racked up 18,000 steps, my feetsies still hurt. They just hurt marginally less than a similar day in October when I also racked up roughly 18,000 steps traipsing around Florence, Italy, with my old Vans and Dr. Scholl’s inserts. But did mild improvement matter if, when standing for 15 minutes between meetings, I still had to shift weight from foot to foot because dammit — having flat feet really sucks?
When I got back, I tried both the default insoles versus the Groov versus the Dr. Scholl’s. I jumped around. I walked. I ran errands. I stood for 15 minutes doing nothing in a store. Arch support was undeniably superior to the flat, supportless defaults. But was Groov’s custom personalization better than a generic insert? Yes. The arch support was more snug and the materials were higher quality. It took a few extra thousand steps for me to start feeling tired. But am I going to preach to every foot-having human that $150 custom, phone-scanned inserts will change your life forever? No.
That’s the thing. There are perfectly valid reasons to find either option superior, and I can convince myself of either. If I prioritize maximum comfort, it’s possible my mind will jump through dozens of hoops to say Groov or bust. If I value my wallet, I can convince myself $20 CVS inserts are just as good. I know because I spent 40 minutes having an existential crisis believing both things, overthinking myself into oblivion. The only conclusive result from an intense week of heavy walking is: Any insole is better than no insole, and whichever one I believe is most effective will feel best to me, regardless of whether it actually is.
This is a peak example of what I call “placebo tech” in the wellness space. The placebo effect refers to a scenario when a fake medical treatment confers actual benefits — for example, in drug trials, one patient is given a real drug and another is given a sugar pill but somehow the latter notes actual improvement. A few years ago I tested the Apollo Neuro — a wearable beeper that claims to vibrate stress away. The science in the marketing and behind the idea itself was dubious at best. However, at times I genuinely felt relief.
In this particular case, custom inserts are a real treatment to improve shoe fit and alleviate foot pain. However, if you throw in buzzwords like AI and a passionate CEO explaining how using an iPhone democratizes the customization process, you’re primed to think this is a better solution than a traditional route. If you perceive any relief, you’re also inclined to believe this form of treatment works better too. That may or may not be true if you decide to test and compare different options.
For the average person, placebo tech can look like this. You’re fed several ads from influencers you like. The marketing includes vaguely sciency or tech-sounding buzzwords, which makes it seem more trustworthy. You convince yourself to buy it, and end up having a neutral to positive experience. You start thinking, “The thing I bought works for me, therefore it’s legit.” It doesn’t matter if 1,000 reviewers later debunk it so long as 20 say it changed their lives. A hundred clinical papers can get shoved your way. Experts can pontificate about the facts until they’re blue in the face. If you believe it works, it might just actually work. And if it doesn’t cause harm, no one can definitively prove otherwise.
With Groov and many other techy wellness products, the main “harm” is the dent in your wallet. The problem is they sit right next to things that do cause harm — and it’s very hard to make a wise judgment call as to which is which.
I’d love to say debunking wellness snake oil only takes common sense and media literacy. But the truth is I often have to experiment firsthand to suss out what’s real, what’s fake, and what’s a placebo. Part of my mission with Optimizer in 2026 is to illustrate how I navigate the wellness wild west, and hope that it encourages you to engage more critically the next time TikTok QVC peddles a miracle cure for whatever it is that’s bugging you.
In the meantime, I have a sneaking suspicion my hunt for the perfect walking shoe (or insole) will never truly be over.
Photography by Victoria Song / The Verge
