14. Follow Me.

I have created an Instagram account for my I AM AN ARTIST alter ego (on 14th January 2017).

Exposure gets you fame not talent at the end of the day and I decided to start there. I discovered a trick to collecting followers, it entails trawling through popular celebrities Instagram pages and following EVERYONE on their suggested drop down….I picked up 200 followers and 60 likes on my only picture in the first hour.

So I set this page up late on Saturday night, it kept me up as I watched all the follows come through..I couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction as I was continually validated by strangers. It was quite addictive going through and following as many celebs as possible knowing I was going to pick up more followers by doing so (for the sake of the project I wanted 1000’s!!) but it also made me feel pretty shallow, empty and like I was being incredibly unproductive. I had no clue who any of the people were who followed me on there but their day-to-day was now on my feed. I had to stop following for the night as Instagram temporarily blocked me for abusing the service. I couldn’t sleep, I woke up late for work as a result. I woke with this sinking feeling and 60 more followers. I felt like I had wasted the night scrolling through Instagram having now followed 1500 pages I was getting a whole load of shite on my feed but I was sucked in a bit…Kim Kardashian is literally everywhere on Instagram it’s fucking awful.

However I was a little saddened when I noticed I had dropped a follow as if someone had saw through my disingenuous bullshit straight away…for a fleeting second it felt personal. Is it really that easy to get caught up in the gratification of the like???