Do You Wanna Be Famous?

Posted: May 18, 2021

[caption id="attachment_41217" align="alignright" width="403"] Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption] The business of being "famous" on Instagram really can be just that - a business. Remembering that everything you see on social media isn't always what's real is something we could all benefit from. In the HBO documentary, Fake Famous, we get a glimpse of how becoming famous on Instagram can be faked until it becomes real. Michelle Scheuermann, Archery Wire editor and social media guru, walks us through the documentary and gives us a breakdown of the tactics that can be used to become fake famous.

Do You Wanna Be Famous?

HBO released a documentary recently about the rise of Instagram “influencers” and how some got to be that way through not-so-true ways. The 90-minute movie, Fake Famous, wants to prove the premise that you can, on social media, “fake it until you make it.” To accomplish this, they mean to pluck three candidates from the bowels of L.A., buy them social media followers, and then wait to see if any brands or agencies ‘bite’ to engage them as an influencer. Something the outdoors industry knows a little bit about. After a casting call of hundreds of folks, they land on three individuals – two guys and a gal – and the story begins. Actually, the story began even before that – during the casting calls, when they asked the candidates how much time they spend on Instagram. I’m not sure what the end game was for asking the question – did they want to ensure the person they were working with was “all in” on the ‘gram? But the answers made me sick. Some people responded with “6 hours a day,” “8 hours a day,” and one kid said “12 hours a day” – and then laughed about it. Holy. Crap. Ok, I can’t unpack that right now. Let’s get back to the premise of the movie. The three individuals chosen were immediately booked for fake photoshoots. They were primped and glammed and sat by a pool in someone’s backyard. The caption said something to the effect of living their best life at the Ritz Carlton in L.A. One image had the girl lying back in a baby pool with rose petals floating delicately in the rainwater and cucumbers on her eyes and where was she? The spa, obvi. From fake hiking pics to renting a fake airplane shell to pretend they were on a private jet – it all was made up. While making up fake things, the director proceeded to buy them fake followers – to the tune of a few thousand fake followers for a few hundred dollars. I bet we all know someone who did this. (None of my clients, however. I don’t believe in that crap.) But wait, there’s more. Because the fake followers weren’t engaging on the account. They had to buy them fake engagement. WHAT??!!! Yep, now bots were clicking “like” and responding with bot-like comments. It got to be a real game for the three candidates and the director as they didn’t want to post anything new without him immediately buying engagement for the post. One candidate sat in his vehicle to watch the “likes” pour in from the bots. That sounds like real fun. Eventually, two of the candidates dropped out. One was sick of the sham and said he could make it on his own. And I truly believe he can. Another developed deep anxiety over posting after (what seemed to me) a relatively minor run-in with a follower. Anyway, the last person, a young lady named Dominque, made it “all the way.” What does that mean? Well, the director deemed her a success because some lame sunglass company sent her product. And then another lame clothing company sent her on an “all-expense paid Influencer party bus trip to Vegas.” Which to me, looked like hell on neon wheels. The ending of that trip resulted in the influencers being dropped off to a fashion trade show in Vegas of some sort, which looked like the basement at SHOT Show – minus the camo. #HardPass. The problem is that I have so many questions from the film. Such as: how much money did the director spend on fake followers and bots? Did Dominque’s account start to “flip” over where real people were following her more so than the bots? Everything was given to her for free – she never made any money, so is that still a success? Not in my book. And my last question – the biggest one of all – how much of this has happened, or is happening, in our industry? I bet you are looking at some accounts you follow right now and are wondering, “Are those followers real?” Hey, I got you. You think I would write 800 words and not help you? If you want to engage an influencer, and they have risen in “insta-stardom” in a relatively short amount of time, and they seem to have a questionable “follower-to-post engagement” metric, which poses questions, then you need to check it. I use HypeAuditor. Actually, the director in the movie used that tool as well when checking Dominque’s score toward the end of the movie. They didn’t name the tool in the movie – I just recognized their website.  HypeAuditor will give the person you are searching for a score and will let you know where their followers are from, demographics and much more. They have their own metrics, called Audience Quality Score, which combines audience quality engagement rate and authenticity into one score. The higher the score on a scale of 1-100, the better. Here’s a screenshot example. This is a paid third-party tool to use, and I only use it on accounts of 50,000 followers or more on Instagram. It isn’t worth it on anything less – unless you are just curious. I encourage you to watch Fake Famous to learn how the game is played. The game itself actually goes much deeper than this movie gets into – which is why you are left with so many questions at the end. But maybe you don’t want to play the game at all. And that’s cool, too.