It was Shakespeare who said, “all the world’s a stage”, and those words have never been truer than in the age of influencer culture.
People will go to extreme lengths to get the perfect shot, up their followers, and reap the rewards and freebies that follow.
If that means getting naked in Chernobyl or adding the hashtag #coronavirus to your perfectly curated bikini shot, then so be it.
But what goes on behind the scenes? We caught a glimpse of how easy it is to fake a lifestyle when YouTuber Natalia Taylor fabricated a vacation in Bali with photos shot in her local IKEA.
Then there’s the Instagram account Influencers in the Wild that, at two million followers and counting, is getting the kind of attention that influencers covet most, by making fun of what really goes into that perfect social media photo.
Per AOL:
The page, founded by Tank Sinatra (not his real name, but as he told In The Know, it might as well be), has exploded in popularity since launching in early January.
Sinatra told In The Know that he got the idea for the account on a business trip to Los Angeles. He was walking through Griffith Park, and saw a girl climbing a tree before posing for a selfie.
“I thought, ‘Man, I wish there was an account getting into all this because you see it everywhere.’ My next thought was, ‘Why do I have to wish there was an account?'” he told In The Know.
Sinatra started collecting behind-the-scenes videos of influencers and posting them online, quickly gathering a large following.
Influencers In The Wild now even has its own submissions page — similar to other popular accounts like the New York-based page, Subway Creatures — where fans can send in their own sightings of elaborate photo-ops. Sinatra said the success has been exciting, but also noted that he now gets “hundreds” of videos sent to him each day.
The videos that he posts are objectively funny, like this one which, if I’m not mistaken, was captured on our very own Lion’s Head:
Stoppit.
Scroll through the account and it’s easy to lose a couple of hours watching videos like this:
And, this:
One more for good measure:
No skaam.
Add a David Attenborough voiceover to that last one and you’ll have comedy gold.
The page’s success might seem drastic, but Sinatra thinks there’s a simple reason why it’s become so popular — relatability. To him, everyone has some version of an online self, and all his account does is highlight that fact.
Sinatra reckons we’re all influencers, whether we like it or not.
Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.
I will be following his account, though.
If you’re after a longer compilation of videos from the Instagram account, this video should do the trick:
[source:aol]
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