How to create fake Instagram star accounts and trick brands to give you money

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/09/how-to-create-fake-instagram-s.html

Sorry, I can’t be bothered.

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Please let this become the endgame of social and online marketing: companies can blow their ad budgets on bots who market at bots, while the rest of us carry on without such “content.” :slight_smile:

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Hey, if you’re not above committing a bit of fraud, there’s a lot of ways to make money. A fraudulent Instagram account is a bunch of work and leaves a lot of evidence behind. You’re probably better off visiting the Instagram headquarters and then faking a slip and fall in the bathroom.

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Generating fake stars is so 80’s.

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Hmmm… gotta start writing a short story on a near-future where instead of the robots taking our jobs leaving us with nothing but fun/leisure (aka social media) to occupy our time, it turns out that we get stuck doing all the work and the robots take over all the fun/leisure for us.

Something like the matrix, but we’re in hamster wheels, not vegetative states, and the media is a passive screen, not interactive. Or, exactly like today, except that social media becomes completely one-way like television. I guess like the 80’s or even 90’s. Did I just M.A.G.A.?

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I think they left out the most important steps:

  1. Be attractive.
  2. Don’t be unattractive
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Don’t forget to include that in the dystopian future, marketing robots will just be advertising at other marketing robots.

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Not necessary. On one account, they hired a model. For the other, they used stock photos.

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There’s the key issue. Work. It’s possible to make money by working a lot. Who knew?

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To whom, precisely?

So, some people just gullibly go along with the idea that a few people are better than others, because they are paid to be themselves? That’s about as vapid as I might expect. How long before most people are clued in?

You mean, like, in Black Mirror?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3cw1zc

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Yo dawg, I heard you like bots…

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I’m too lazy to check but I wonder if there is some idiot giving a course on how to do this online and charging over $500 a head. And then give a fake course of course.

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Is it the same cost to buy followers for an up n comer doomsday cult?

Just wondering.

It’s also possible to work a lot and still lose money, so …

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You load sixteen tons, and whaddaya get?

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You broke it, you bot it!

Advertising execs.

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