This week sees the premiere of Fake Famous on HBO and HBO Max, a new documentary by former New York Times technology writer Nick Bilton. Bilton was one of the earliest writers examining the overlap of fame and the digital world, and he’s using what he learned to stage a modern social experiment: how do you make ordinary people notorious online?
In Fake Famous, Bilton takes three Los Angeles residents and offers them a boon: he will blow up their social media profiles and transform them into Instagram stars. The trio each has their reasons for wanting fame—one is an aspiring actress, another a personal assistant to a real estate agent who dreams of a more exciting life, and the third a musician and fashion designer who fled Tucson for the City of Angels.
The director pays for tens of thousands of bogus followers for each account, loading them up with likes and comments. He stages photo shoots for them, pretending that they’re flying on private planes, getting luxe spa treatments, and more. The goal is to pivot them into presenting an aspirational life to the outside world, in hopes that they can fake it until they make it.
Spoiler alert: they do. In the grand tradition of unearned internet fame, the three swiftly find their profiles expanding, and before too long they’re being offered free stuff just to take pictures with it on their Instagram feeds. But is it really that easy? Let’s look at some other examples.
One Sip of Kombucha
While the trio in Fake Famous are, at first, happy to just use their ill-gotten metrics, most people who try to gain online fame do it the natural way, by producing content of some sort and hoping that it finds an audience. But the algorithms are a tricky thing to wrangle, and the vast majority of social network users labor in obscurity their whole lives.
Sometimes all it takes is one shot, though, as Brittany Tomlinson learned in August 2019. That’s when she uploaded a video of herself tasting the polarizing fermented beverage kombucha to her TikTok account. Tomlinson had been laboring in the TikTok trenches for a few months, and had other clips perform decently, but this one was a game-changer. She quickly obtained meme status, her video remixed and shared and clipped for GIFs all over the internet.
It didn’t take long for her to get signed to a talent agency and move to Los Angeles, where she landed a spot in a Super Bowl commercial. Whether this is just a stepping stone to bigger things for the newly dubbed “Brittany Broski” is still up for discussion, but there’s no denying that she saw her life changed overnight.
But what if you don’t want to wait for that stroke of luck for something to go viral? Can you draw a road map to get online famous intentionally?
Niche Interests
The subjects of Fake Famous don’t try to get notoriety from their skills, talents, and passions. They’re using their platforms to build an audience that they hope will then follow them to what they actually want to do with their lives. But can you break through while still doing what you love? Sure, with some caveats.
If you want to grind your way to success, there are a few commonalities in the success stories. We’re not talking about “famous for being famous” people like your sprawling Kardashian clans, but rather people who took their interests and skills and leveraged them to a public platform.
Video games, crafts, cooking, stunts, sports—whatever you’re into, chances are you’re not alone in the world. There’s a pre-built audience out there that shares your affinities, so you need to figure out how to capture them. Whether it's streaming gameplay on Twitch, making instructional videos on TikTok or highlight reels on YouTube, putting content out there is the way to go.
The odds are, however, that you might not be the absolute best in your niche. It’s a big world, with a lot of people in it, and unique approaches are hard to come by. So how do you make yourself stand out?
It’s vital to network. Whether you know it or not, you’re part of a community, so position yourself accordingly. Comment on other accounts that work in the same niche, share their content and build rapport. Over time, you’ll not only be able to reach their fans directly but also harness platform algorithms to share your stuff. It’s not an easy hill to climb, but it’s been done.
Of course, even if you do everything right, there’s no guarantee that you’ll find that audience. There’s a lot of luck involved in the influencer marketplace, which is why other people feel the need to grease the wheels with cold hard cash.
Pay to Play
If you don’t care about building an organic audience and just want to take fame, that works too—to some degree.
There’s a concept in psychology called “social proof,” coined by a guy named Robert Cialdini in 1984. In short, it describes the tendency of humans to mirror or mimic the behavior of others in order to fit in with society at large. Think about how crowds behave. The more people who you can see doing something, the more your unconscious mind pushes you to do it, too.
That’s the core mechanic behind social media metrics. When we see a post with thousands of likes and comments, we’re primed to think that it’s important, interesting, and worth our attention. And we’re more likely to like and comment on it ourselves. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger as it goes. Sometimes all it takes is a hard enough push to get it started.
Like in Fake Famous, that push can be had for a price. There are multiple services out there that offer Instagram followers for a few cents apiece, along with likes and comments for a little bit more. These companies have evolved their business practices to seem like legitimate users, doling out interactions over a span of time. And as those interactions go up, your chances of having your content surfaced by discovery algorithms also increases, letting them be joined by real people and making the fakes even harder to spot.
However, it’s important to note that these fraudulent followers won’t last forever. And, in extreme cases, social networks can strike back at you for buying them. Most of the major platforms ban "inauthentic behavior." That vaguely worded phrase covers operating multiple accounts to boost engagement, purchasing interactions, and a bunch of other stuff. While it’s doubtful one offense would get you banned without a warning, it’s a possibility.
And, at the end of the day, is it really worth it to be an e-celeb? Are free sunglasses and simps in the DM a fair trade-off for eliminating your last shred of privacy? That’s a decision we each have to make on our own.
Fake Famous premieres Feb. 2 at 9 p.m. on HBO.
Further Reading
Social Media Reviews
The Link LonkFebruary 03, 2021 at 01:47AM
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-easy-is-it-to-become-fake-famous-on-social-media
How Easy Is it to Become 'Fake Famous' on Social Media? - PCMag
https://news.google.com/search?q=easy&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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