Confessions of an Instagram Influencer
My wife and I were just talking about this today, coincidentally.She follows a few people around the world who are artists or collectors on IG.  She pointed out to me that when she started following some of them more than a year ago, they had a few hundred followers, and were posting general stuff, but which all felt heartfelt and 'in the moment'.  I think 'genuine' was the word my wife used.  Kids doing silly things.  Artwork in various stages of completion, etc.But now, she has noticed a couple of them have rocketed to over hundreds of thousands of followers, and their posts have changed to become quite soulless and fake.  Obviously they have been engaged by a marketing or promotional company that sanitises and sets up their posts for them.All of a sudden, an artist who was formerly struggling to raise a family and make meaningful work is announcing (and posting photos) that they are in [insert brand name here] health spa having a weekend pampering.  Continuous shots of not the art or kids, but of bath products, massage companies, drink companies etc. all heavily hashtagged.  Following up a few days later are pictures of the kids, but this time around a brand new laptop with the manufacturers name and laptop model hashtagged to the hilt.As @sAbakumoff pointed out here - this is "Black Mirror" Season 3 Episode 1 come to life.  I have nothing against someone doing promotional work to earn money to live, but I do have a problem with people portraying a totally fake and unrealistic life as a reality.We are just seeing magazines starting to push back against "Generation Photoshop" and go back to 'real' shots of people again (Pirelli 2017 calendar a case in point), but are we now going to replace Photoshop with 'posed reality'?  I know a lot of us do that to a certain extent on social media anyway, but not for discounts or monetary compensation, usually.