Getting Real

This post is inspired by all of the Instagram news in the past week or so following the moment when Ariana Grande surpassed Taylor Swift in Instagram followers to become the second most followed account on the platform behind Selena Gomez, who has remained number for over a year now. Attention on the subject has also been sparked by the release of Gomez’s recent Vogue feature in which she discloses her love/hate relationship with Instagram, including how being #1 prompted her to take a break from the social platform and it’s influence on her mental health.

In all honesty, I’m not sure why Gomez and Grande have the most followers. It seems as though there are multiple other people who’s accounts would be more popular due to their position in the media and as public figures. I consider myself a fan of both women and follow both of their accounts on Instagram so I feel as though I don’t necessarily have an unbiased opinion about the content that they share and their position of significance. In my search to find out what other people were saying about their Instagram “success” I found two Vanity Fair articles, written by the same author almost exactly one year apart. The first, from 2016, is “How Did Selena Gomez Become the Most Followed Person on Instagram?” and the second, from this year, is “How Ariana Grande Amassed Her 100 Million Instagram Followers”. Each article includes a list of reasons that outline the factors that allowed both accounts to become number one and number two in followers. The lists are very similar, although they do contradict each other too, and lead me to think about two very important points about authenticity and mental health. The following are the theories as to how each account rose to the top.

Selena’s list:

• she doesn’t post that often (each post becomes an “event”)
• her fans are highly engaged (in terms of likes and shares)
• the “Justin” factor (people are obsessed with their romance and the relationships with others that she associated herself with on her feed)
• “relatable content” (low-key and low-maintenance)

Ariana’s list:

• posting frequently, in flurries (more is more, no intense curation)
• keeping it real (she doesn’t oversell, or overwork)
• recurring characters (creates a narrative)

The major comparison between the two accounts is Gomez’s and Grande’s ability to portray authenticity and “be real” with their followers, by not including anything too glamorous or overrated. Through their choices of pictures and captions it all appears non-artificial.

The ironic thing is that many of their posts cross the line from genuine to profitable and commercial, selling to organizations that want access to the millions of people who clicked follow to subscribe to authentic content. It’s not complicated as to why brands want to be able to feature their products on popular accounts and will spend their marketing budget to do so. According to recent estimates posts from the top Instagram accounts have been valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars and Gomez’s at half a million dollars. Although it’s hard to wrap my head around half a million dollars I’m not sure I want to point the “selling out” finger. What’s weird is that now we’ve been left with this fine line between sharing content to share content and sharing content for a pay check. What excludes the serious allegations of “selling out” is that social media has become an integral part in brand management and can be applied to the individual just as it can be applied to the organization. Even if we are just sharing content for the purpose of sharing content we are promoting a personal brand. And some of us have built a brand valuable enough to attract business. I don’t find myself offended by the concept because, it’s true, I am consuming most of my media through social platforms. If brands want to market their products to me, that’s where they’ll find me. I’m able to curate what accounts I want to follow and for what purpose. I find that authenticity and an account’s ability to “be real” is what attracts me to follow them and interact with their content, just as the Vanity Fair articles suggests. It makes it obvious as to which accounts lack any human substance and are the output of a brand machine, impossible to be coming from a real person.

Theory of Ariana Grande’s move to number two is concluded by saying, “in an age in which many celebrities, and many of us, post on social media less for ourselves and more for a desired intended effect, there is something about her approach that is extremely refreshing.” In understanding where this idea comes from connects to the authenticity of the thing, which is directly related to the mental health of it all.

As much as authenticity and relatability are thrown into the conversation of the effects of the content of popular Instagram accounts it is hard to understand the reality of this, considering that there is a separation between social media and real life. People don’t post and aren’t able to post all aspects of their entire life, good and bad, high and low. We choose to share the best aspects of our lives through our social media. I think it’s because that is what we want to be known for and how we want to remember ourselves. Even if we don’t feel as though our lives are worthy enough to share, at least we can make it seem that way. With popular brands and celebrities that we are able to follow 24/7 on every social platform it can seem as though their lives are all that they have made it seem to be.

Casey Neistat made a good video talking about this in light of vloggers.

He says, “we have the opportunity to edit our lives” and as much as that is good for entertainment, it’s not good for staying grounded in reality. I am often caught reminding myself of the periods of time that go between each post, the amount of editing that could go into an ocean looking that blue and the power of curation that someone has in editing out the parts of their lives that they don’t want people to see, no matter how many of these “unflitered”, “unedited”, “candid” moments they disclose.