Instagram Infamous

It’s the only gram to have caused such a stir since Colombia began internationally exporting. Hours pass by as we stroke our screens in a zombie like stupor hoping all that rubbing will produce some genie like magic to leave us startled by. To generation Instagram, the kings and queens of the social media scene are now the pinnacle of the new age celebrity.

Yet it’s hard to imagine the public figures of past would do quite as well these days: only 12 followers, Last Supper #foodporn and glowing-bush selfies. Just your average bearded hipster really.

When signed to a modelling agency you’re immediately assigned an Instagram. If you already have it, you’re told to delete all your previous photographic scum. I was shocked that apparently people didn’t want to see my macro, heavily contrasted snaps of an IKEA desktop lightbulb. When I began three years ago, having a big following certainly did no harm. These days, it’s a different story.

On returning to New York last August after nearly a year away, I was greeted by a new social media executive who swiftly sat me down and gave me a very serious social media seminar. This was then followed up by a PDF attached email reiterating its importance. I was told bluntly by my agency that I had been dropped from consideration for a campaign that I booked last year because I didn’t have over 10K followers. Since then this bizarre rejection of my meagre 8,000 odd following has recurred a couple of times. I apologise for even bothering guys.

Having hung out with a few obsessed and albeit successful model instagrammers it became apparent they were almost living life one post at a time. They would specifically travel somewhere or do something primarily for the selfie, and what they were actually seeing or doing was of secondary importance. It’s horrendously contrived and quite sad. When faced with the inevitable mockery, they would shrug and mutter something about ‘the followers’ and ‘the clients’.

As much as there is some marginal truth in this, people love posting pictures for self-gratification and the human face receives the greatest adulation of all. Of course, it’s a choice. You can model, make money and travel without tirelessly posting oily ab shots from the gym. But could you make more money by posting yourself and getting a bigger following? The sad truth is probably that with demand for prestige, faux-fame and further reaching marketing it’s an attractive feature for clients.

However, creating this demand sets up a nice neat veil for the semblance of narcissism to hide behind.
If a nature photographer posted a photo of his much prided homemade soup, you would quickly un-follow them. Logically, followers of models on Instagram don’t want to see an emoji scribbled onto someone’s arm at 4 AM (I don’t know why I bother really). Unfortunately, we’re forced into the narcissistic niche of selfies.

However, I want to address a far more pressing question: do easily infatuated preteen girls want to wear men’s Gucci suits?

To live in such a world would be amazing, but somehow I feel like they don’t. Therefore where is the logic in demanding that models have a threshold of followers? I guarantee I could get my Mum 10,000 followers in a year simply because of the subtlety and ease of buying likes and followers now and it would be sufficient to con any unsuspecting insta-fool. So this begs the question, are followers really that important? I know how contentious this issue is for a lot of people. Do you go with the ‘I’m so pretty, look at me’, or the ‘I’m so edgy and hilarious, look at me’ route? In the end it’s all a helpless plea for attention. Or perhaps I’m just bitter that I didn’t book a job… or two, or three.

Also if you want to abuse me on Instagram for my painful contradictions, it’s @Harvjam.