When I was young and joined social media for the first time, I thought that people with thousands of followers they were truly famous and they were talented. I thought if someone has lots of likes, it means that many people truly enjoyed their content. But as I started to use it on a regular basis and grew older, I learned that not everything we see online is real. There are plenty of content creators who people buy fake followers, likes and views just to look popular.
Last year I was following a girl on Instagram, she always showed her expensive clothes and luxury bags, I was amazed by how rich she was. She used to go to fancy restaurants everyday. Also, never seen her wearing the same attire twice. She made it seem like she had a perfect and rich life. I admired her at first because I thought she had earned all of it. Later, I found out that many of her followers were fake and the things she showed were borrowed. She was exposed by one of her fans. That really changed the way I look at social media.
People who pretend to be rich online. They create pressure for young people to compare themselves with a life that may not even be real. I have seen my friends with such jealous feelings before but I have told them that social media only shows what people want us to see.
I think fake followers hurt more people than we realize. I had a classmate who pretended to be an influencer on instagram. She always behaved like an arrogant person. When I looked at her profile, I saw she had 10k followers on Instagram. But when I clicked her photos there was barely any comments, only 2-3 friends of her left comments and she had hidden the like amount. She accidentally forgot to hide one photo. So, I noticed that photo was liked by twelve people only and they were her friends. Then I realised that she was not an influencer.
Yet, she was receiving free products from the small brands and she always showed them off. Even though these brands had no idea that they won't gain anything by collaborating with her. They were being deceived by her. So, honest creators who spend years can lose those chances because of these influencers with fake followers. Brands believe such fake influencers is because they think, "If so many people follow this person, they must be trustworthy." Sadly, that is not always true.
I do think buying fake followers should have consequences but only if it is used to deceive brands or scam people. The internet should be a place where honesty matters. I would rather follow someone with a small amount of followers but genuine. I would not like to follow someone who only looks successful because of fake numbers. People should start being productive and stop looking for short cuts, only then they can gain true followers.
The pictures are created with chatgpt.
