[imagesource: Newsroom NZ/ YouTube]

The only thing more dangerous than an influencer is someone who wants to be an influencer.

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, adding the hashtag #coronavirus to your perfectly curated bikini shot, or trespassing on someone’s land and swimming in their water source, then so be it.

That’s what has been happening to New Zealander Buzz Kronfeld, part of a family who owns three plots of land at Anawhata Beach, 50km from Auckland.

The Guardian with why Kronfeld has had it up to his eyeballs with Instagrammers.

They climb over barbed wire, past “private property” signs and pose precariously on the edge of a 50-metre cliff face – all to get the perfect Instagram shot.

Anawhata is pristine, remote and wild, and the view from high above it on Kronfeld’s property, might be – unfortunately for its owners – among the best in New Zealand. Now, chasing off would-be Instagram stars has become a full-time source of stress for its owners as the mostly young visitors befoul the landscape, dirty the water and put themselves in danger taking photos on the edge of a 50-metre rock face, he said.

‘Befoul the landscape’ – what a beautiful turn of phrase to describe their moronic behaviour.

I reckon there would be some great entries for the ‘Influencers in the Wild’ account.

Back to Kronfeld, whose family has owned the property since 1926:

All was peaceful until about five years ago, Kronfeld told the Guardian, when his property suddenly started to receive a lot of visitors.

“We couldn’t work out why so many people were coming,” he said. “Then someone said ‘It’s because the pools are all over the internet.’”

Finding the “secret” pools at Anawhata Beach has become a piece of online lore; directions are listed on tourist sites and Instagrammers who visit call it a “hidden gem” or “Auckland’s best kept secret”.

Chasing people off his land has become something akin to a full-time job for Kronfeld.

Newsroom NZ even did a 13-minute investigative piece on the problem:

Instagrammers are pretty open about why they trespass, despite multiple signs telling them they’ve entered private property.

Others are more direct. “Def worth a trespass,” one woman on Instagram captioned her picture. “One of the nicer places I have urinated,” wrote a young man, below a photo of himself relaxing in one of the pools.

Keep in mind that the pools are also Kronfeld’s water supply…

During summer, Kronfeld said, visitors number 30 to 40 a day.

“I kicked 23 people out of the pools once,” he said, adding that some were angry when asked to leave, and on a couple of occasions, his relatives had almost come to blows with trespassers.

Since the publication of the News NZ article, he noticed that pictures taken of the pools started to vanish from Instagram.

We did find these:

Kronfeld goes there himself to take in the view, but he says he “doesn’t get his phone out”, he just “looks”.

It’s a truly wild concept that seems utterly foreign to so many these days.

Again, if you don’t follow Influencers in the Wild on Instagram, now’s the time to start.

It explains a great deal…

[source:guardian]