Something has really got my back up this morning, so rather than rant to Rob about it, he suggested I take to the blog to share my feelings. Apologies in advance that this post isn’t full of cool new fitness clothes or workout tips, but this is something that I feel pretty strongly about….
STOP BUYING INSTAGRAM FAKE FOLLOWERS!
I’m not going to name names, as I don’t think it’s my place to out people, but I’ve noticed a couple of fellow health/fitness lovers doing it in the past and another one more recently. I totally understand that people see Instagram as part of their blog business now, and so do I to an extent, but it angers me so much when someone feels the need to up their follower number in such a false way. Why do it? So a brand sends you some gifts? So that other REAL people think you’re a big deal and are more inclined to follow you? So that you get paid to post photos? I’m guessing the answer is all of the above.
What gets my goat most is that there are a lot of genuine people who don’t do this and work their butts off to increase their numbers and produce great content for their followers. I recently hit the 10k mark on my Instagram and acted like an excitable little puppy – I’m so grateful to all of those who follow me and I hope to keep inspiring everyone and creating cool photos. I suppose those who buy followers will never get the feeling of genuine satisfaction I had when I reached 10k and that’s rather sad.
The other sad thing is that so many brands just look at that one number and then instantly want to work with them. I understand that it’s hard for a brand to scroll through followers and try to work out if they’re paid for or not, and that’s why it will continue to happen.
I know Instagram had a clear-out recently, which was great, but I can only assume that because these people have paid for followers, the company they did it with worked like crazy people, trying to re-build those fake profiles, hence the buyers numbers going up much quicker than everyone else’s after the clear out. Obviously I don’t know that for sure, I’m just guessing, but you’ve got to admit it seems pretty fishy.
And here’s my final thought… Whilst I’m writing this, Gogglebox is on in the background and they’re watching Comic Relief and the extremely sad story of a young boy who died because there weren’t enough medical staff to save him. Maybe think about what else you can spend that money on, rather than a few thousand fake profile pages on Instagram.