Under the Influence- How to Fake Your Way Into Getting Rich on Instagram

by Trey Ratcliff

  Susan Ratcliff (Instagram - @calinapa)

  Tane Gent (His real Instagram - @tanegent)

  Thomas Hawk (Instagram - @thomashawk)

  Tina Guo (Instagram - @tinaguo)

  Tobi Innes (Instagram - @tobi.innes)

  Tom Anderson (Instagram - @myspacetom)

  Tracy Cameron (Instagram - @ican_models)

  Will Scown (Instagram - @daysrun)

  Zeeshan Kazmi (Instagram - @zshankazmi1)

  INTRODUCTION

  Lacie is constantly on her phone. An app dominates her attention—one where people are giving ratings on a scale of one to five, but not of her photos.

  People are rating her.

  Lacie’s ratings are based on everything she posts online as well as how she behaves in the real world. Her quotidian barista gives her a nice rating and she gives one back. She greets her coworkers while gliding through the office as they merrily flick high ratings at one another.

  But all is not sunny for Lacie. She rates a 4.2 out of 5, and she’s desperate to get a higher rating. She contorts her behavior in ways she believes will earn her good reviews from other, more highly rated people. Her self-worth is tied to that score, and it fills her with anxiety. This app is no longer just an app. It’s her whole life.

  “It’s easy to lose sight of what’s real,” Lacie laments. Things begin to go awry for Lacie as a series of events injure her rating and her sanity spirals downward. Showing that her life, directed by the app, is hollow and meaningless outside of it.

  Black Mirror fans will no doubt recognize Lacie from “Nosedive” (Season 3, Episode 1) of the Netflix sci-fi drama.1 Charlie Brooker, the writer and creator of Black Mirror, called the episode a “satire on acceptance and the image of ourselves we like to portray and project to others.”

  Of course, Brooker’s unflinching portrayal of social hacking leading to mass delusional behavior is fiction. But the episode is uncomfortable to watch because this is the world many of us, to varying degrees, actually inhabit.

  Now, let’s take it one step further. Imagine if the highest-scoring users of this app could cash in on their scores and receive luxury perks—even cold hard cash—in real life. In 2017 according to The Atlantic, brands paid an estimated $2 billion to popular Instagram users—also known as Influencers—in exchange for an Influencer mention on social media, the latest form of celebrity endorsement.2

  Unfortunately, the world of Black Mirror is no longer fiction. Before we dive into the bewildering world of social media, where a 7-year-old made $22 million in 2018 for reviewing toys and an alarming number of fake Influencers swindled companies out of mountains of cash and luxury goods, let’s take a brief step back.

  Chapter 1

  Under the Influence

  “There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.”

  — Christopher Hitchens

  Before I walk you down the primrose path that begins with innocence on Instagram and ends with a polemical analysis of dystopian mass delusional behavior, let’s start with the basics of social media.

  Connecting the World

  Many great things have come from connecting the world on social media platforms. Due to the advent of social media, large-scale charity has been accomplished. Promising programmers in a remote village in India can get a job in Silicon Valley. Yogis can find and plan retreats. Political protests can spread and gather momentum to create meaningful change. Artists can collaborate. Inspirational videos (as well as ones about cats) can be shared. We can easily share birthday photos with loved ones on the other side of the world, get people to turn up for our community bake sales, and form gardening clubs with other people who like to talk about flowers.

  While social media can enable some of these marvelous activities, it also acts as a platform and a megaphone for some of the worst aspects of human nature. Fear, violence, narcissism, hate, and bullying have all found homes on social media.

  There are all kinds of crazy things happening on the internet. Based on a Pareto distribution, about 80% appear to be negative. In this book, I’ll not only talk about the bad activities but also the bad actors who are contributing to the creation of an unstable online world that can’t be trusted.

  In the following chapters, I use Instagram as my case example. That said, most of the content you’ll read about is applicable to most social networks.

  Who Uses Instagram?

  In 2010 a photo sharing app called Instagram launched bringing back the nostalgia of Polaroids with a trendy square photo crop. The platform quickly gained a massive user base due to its user interface. It provided a simple way to edit a mobile photo directly on your phone, allow you to add fun filters to make it look cool, and share it instantly with your friends. Two years later Facebook acquired Instagram for a cool $1 billion helping Instagram skyrocket into one of the world’s most popular social networks. Today it has about a billion users worldwide. It’s an obvious place to hang out if you’re into photography but people use it for nearly everything.

  Instagram just passed 1 billion users, and it shows no sign of slowing down.3

  What Are Influencers, and Why Do They Matter?

  I’ll never forget the time I first met an Instagram “Influencer.” It happened several years ago. I was speaking at a social media conference about travel photography. Later that evening, at a dreadful cocktail party, a woman came up to me with eyes as large as saucers. She squealed, “Are you an Influencer, like us?”

  In my mind, I was thinking, “What the hell is an Influencer?” If I can’t even influence my besetting kids to clean their rooms, how could I possibly influence anyone else?

  Advertising has changed a lot in recent years. We no longer wait until 6 p.m. to watch the news, which is interrupted by advertisements. As print media declines in circulation, it becomes less relevant as an advertising platform. The paid services that we use, such as Netflix and Spotify, don’t even have advertising. And many online users make use of ad blocking software.

  Because of these shifts, advertisers have had to look for novel ways to put their products in front of eyeballs.

  Celebrity endorsements are not a new phenomenon. There have always been famous people who promote products or services and are paid to do so. Traditionally this promotion happened overtly, in a video or print advertisement, or perhaps via product placement in a movie or TV show.

  Since the advent of social media, a new type of celebrity has arisen. These new celebrities are the social media users with the most followers and they are most commonly called “Influencers.” Often, because these Influencers are so popular on the Internet, they are paid by brands to mention products or services in their social media posts. The general idea is that when an Influencer endorses something their followers will definitely take notice, especially if the endorsement is authentic. Additionally, Influencers typically have a well-defined niche such as running, fashion, baking, or in my case, travel photography. Brands think they can more easily target their intended audience—for example, aspiring bakers—by working with Influencers in that space.

  What’s the threshold to be considered an Influencer? Generally, on Instagram, an Influencer is someone with over 25,000 followers. Influencers with over 25,000 followers are now being pursued by companies who are not only offering their products and services for free to Influencers but often paying cash for the exposure, much like a traditional advertising contract.

  To be clear, these sponsorships are different than the paid “Sponsored ads” that you see in your feed. Sponsored ads are deals that brands broker directly with Instagram. Influencer deals, on the other hand, happen behind the scenes—between the Influencer and the brand.

  When your favorite celebrity is selling something in a magazine ad, most of us take it with a grain of salt. We know she’s getting paid to be associated with that product. But when a social media star touts a Prada bag as an essential accessory for a particular lifestyle she’s promoting, mos
t of her followers will take it as a genuine endorsement because it deliberately is not redolent a traditional advertisement.

  An enthusiastic endorsement by an Instagram star could be worth many times what companies pay for a mention in a post because the endorsement looks authentic to a captivated audience. It’s as if the star really believes the product is great. The endorsement looks so real that Influencer love now comes with a pretty hefty price tag.

  In general, the more followers you have the more money you can make on your posts. Some of the most-followed Influencers, with millions of followers, can easily ask for over $100,000 for a post or for a series of posts across a campaign.

  There are also “micro-Influencers,” with over 10,000 followers in a particular niche, who are also attractive to advertisers. These rates can vary wildly from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. Using our baking example—instead of paying just one very famous Influencer, Betty Crocker could do deals with 100 different micro-Influencers in the baking space who mostly just post photos of cakes and muffins.

  Instagram doesn’t require sponsorship transparency. They don’t require that a lifestyle Influencer disclose they received a bag for free or that Prada negotiated a deal to be featured in three of her posts in exchange for a handsome paycheck. The Federal Communications Commission does require this sort of disclosure. However, on social media, it’s very difficult to know just by looking if someone is just being showy with their Prada bag or if they were paid to show off their Prada bag.

  Who Are Influencers?

  Some of these Influencers are quite well known and they make quite a bit of money. Among the top ten highest-paid influencers in 2018 are Selena Gomez, Beyoncé, and Justin Bieber.

  Here’s the top ten highest-paid Instagram Influencers in 2018, according to HopperHQ.com.4 Imagine being able to make $1M USD with just one Instagram post.

  However, post sponsorship extends far beyond the most obvious stars. For example, there’s a good chance these twin 2-year-olds, Taytum and Oakley Fisher, make more money than you. According to Fast Company, they command $15,000 to $25,000 per post. Their managing parents say they can get bigger deals but it’s difficult right now “because the girls can’t really follow directions.”5

  Two enterprising out-of-work Hollywood actors have created a goldmine Instagram account for their twin daughters.

  This is just one example of the impact social media is having on kids growing up with it. Around the world, becoming a social media Influencer has skyrocketed to the #1 career aspiration for kids. Mediakix released a study that said that 75% of kids aged 6 to 17 want to become an online personality, whereas just 1 in 15 want to be a boring doctor.6 In New Zealand, where I live, the number is even higher—9 in 10 children said they want to be an Influencer.7 Why spend ten long and expensive years in medical school when you can get a lot of free stuff, go on trips to exotic places, and party all the time while being adored by fans around the world?

  For comparison, when I was growing up in the ‘70s, I wanted to be an astronaut or President of the United States. I still want to be an astronaut.

  OPPO, a mobile phone company, recently announced they were looking for an Influencer to go on a paid gig to travel for free for 3 months to take photos with their new phone. Who wouldn’t want that?

  The announcement, coincidentally, came on the heels of a study they conducted on the effectiveness and desirability of being an Influencer. According to OPPO’s study, “36% [of Influencers] say they’ve tried to build up their Instagram following, with 39% admitting they get anxious about the number of likes they’ll get when posting on Instagram.”8 Their study also showed that 1 in 6 aspirational Influencers said they would gladly take a course that teaches them how to be a more successful Influencer. Many already take expensive courses as referenced later in the book.

  How Widespread Is This Phenomenon?

  The sponsorship of Instagram posts is a quickly growing trend. There were about 10 million brand-sponsored Influencer posts on Instagram in 2016 and that number is expected to break 30 million in 2019. That’s a growth rate of almost 50% year-on-year.

  Over the last few years, the number of brand-sponsored Influencer posts has grown by almost 50% every year.9

  At the individual Influencer level, the prices brands are willing to pay are astronomical. Kylie Jenner (@kyliejenner) makes $1M USD per post on Instagram. Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) makes $800K per post. Kim Kardashian’s desultory posts are bringing up the rear. Take a look a few pages back to see the top ten list.10

  Successful Influencers can make millions per year on social media deals alone. The top YouTube Influencer, Ryan ToysReview, made over $20 million last year.11 Ryan’s channel, you may not be surprised to learn, features reviews of toys. On the other hand, you may be surprised to learn that Ryan is seven years old.

  This is a list of the earnings of some of the top Influencers from YouTube.12 You may not recognize many of these names, but I can guarantee your children probably would. It is important to note that I am not suggesting any of them are fraudulent, but rather illustrating how these massive paychecks can be very alluring. Sidenote: Ryan ToysReview, in the #1 spot, is seven years old. There was no way I could have come close with my paper route or any afterschool job when I was a kid. Actually, good for him, because there is some good stuff that happens on the Internet and brings good fortune to creative content. Personally, I find his YouTube channel to be unwatchable, but it just shows how many types of audiences are out there.

  Many brands feel like advertising in this way on social media is no longer an optional channel—it’s required. For example, there was a recent article in WIRED about a new eyelash company, called Lashify. Lashify’s founder, Sahara Lotti, said, “she was told to expect to shell out $50,000 to $70,000 per Influencer just to make her company’s name known.” When she didn’t get in the Influencer game, she alleges a competitor paid a top Influencer to give her Lashify product a brutally negative review. Lotti compared the system to the mafia.13

  What’s the Secret?

  If you have played around with Instagram at all you’ll know it’s not as easy as it sounds to get 25,000 people to click on the “Follow” button. It takes a lot more than posting a few pretty pics. So, how are so many newly minted Influencers appearing seemingly overnight, boasting huge followings and an enviable engagement rate that qualifies them for cash and free stuff?

  Hey, pssssst, wanna know a secret? You can buy followers. You can buy comments. You can buy likes. And, to the casual observer, this interaction appears to be legitimate.

  But these followers, commenters, and likers are not real. Purchased post engagement is actually generated mostly by bots. That’s right—these followers, comments, and likes are non-human scripts running on a remote computer. They aren’t real people. And hardly anybody is checking to see if they are.

  And hardly anybody is checking to see if they are.

  Why would someone buy fake followers? Some users simply buy followers for clout, so they can appear more popular than they are to their friends. These social media addicts may also buy likes and comments for their photos, just to show off. I think this is a very silly and egotistic reason, but it’s not fraud.

  However, there is a more unscrupulous reason for buying followers.

  Influencers use the methods described in this book to get cash and free stuff for their own benefit. Once they hit the thresholds we discussed above (10,000, 25,000, or more followers), brands start approaching them (or vice-versa) to make business deals. So, some Instagram users are doing just that. They’ve created a fake following—mostly consisting of fake people—and now are reaping real rewards.

  Anything that can be counted online can be faked. And more people than you think are faking it.

  Besides the people that are faking it by using the fraudulent techniques outlined in the book, we also delve into that unusual cadre of Influencers who pretend to have a perfect life. As yo
u’ll see, their seemingly virginal nobility is more likely an immaculate misconception.

  What Is Really Happening to Us on Social Media?

  Why is it important to know that some of the most popular users on social media are deceiving us? We are currently experiencing one of the most significant sociological upheavals in history and it’s impacting almost everyone on Earth. The social media phenomenon has only taken a few short years to significantly impact society, and yet it has created more mass anxiety than almost any other social change in history.

  Our minds and lives are being hacked by social media. The algorithms that choose what you see online are engineered to maximize the time you spend looking at your screen rather than time away from your screen. These algorithms have figured out what you like, what you don’t like, what gets you outraged, and what keeps you interacting.

  There is a saying that fish cannot see the water in which they swim. They’re too used to its ubiquity. In this way, humans also “swim” in something we don’t completely understand—our consciousness. Consciousness is definitely real, but it’s difficult for us to discern or describe. If you practice mindfulness, meditation, reflection, or if you spend time in nature, then you do get a glimpse of it. However, in a short space of time, social media has taken humans away from a more mindful and conscious state of mind.

  How has this happened? Have you noticed the little boost you get from seeing you’ve got a new comment, “like,” or follower on a social media platform? What about the disappointment in finding no new notifications and feeling that craving to check all over again a few moments later?