Almost 4 years ago I wrote a post talking about how much I love Instagram. For the few of you who don’t know what that is, it’s an app you can add to your smartphone where you can upload images you take with it and also look at a lot of pictures other people put up. Since I love looking at pictures of all types, this bad boy was meant specifically for me. 🙂
Or at least it “was” for me. Over the last 4 years there’s been a lot of changes, some for the good, some irritating. For instance, there are a lot of people who are trying to do business on there by posting motivational messages along with advertisements… those aren’t really pictures. Instagram also now allows advertising of the video variety, and though I don’t like that I understand that companies deserve to make money (it’s owned by Facebook).
There’s also a lot of trolls and nasty people who say and do a lot of hateful and disgusting things that makes part of the experience become diminished a little bit. I’m not getting anything close to that kind of attention so it’s not a problem for me, but sometimes I’ll look at the comments other people write on some of the pictures; it’s just like reading the comments section of a local newspaper.
Nope, I don’t get that kind of attention. But I have been getting a lot of attention lately, which I don’t understand. In the vernacular of my youth, a lot of “hot chicks” are suddenly following me there. I’m not lying; these are some very attractive ladies, very young… and they’re following me!
That part is confusing enough, but the majority of them are Russian or Asian, and they’re coming out of the woodwork. What the hey?
Being older, I don’t just up and follow every pretty face that graces my fiend of social media vision; being married stops that also. lol However, I do check out people when the follow me, just to see if they might be real or not.
The accounts that have 7 or so pictures that have all been posted within a few days of each other are easy to figure out that they’re some sort of spam or something. Those usually have a hidden link that they’re hoping you’ll click on; don’t click on those thing… ever!
What I’m seeing mostly lately are women with tons of images on their page; that’s unexpected. I don’t see a link on any of them either. What I do see… and don’t see… is interesting though.
What I see are tons of hashtags for almost every picture. Since I’m someone who rarely uses more than one, that’s a bit odd. What I don’t see is any kind of explanation of what the picture is about, which kind of fits if it’s all face or body shots, but wouldn’t you think that some of the images would have some kind of explanation, or a quick word on what they were thinking at the time they posted the image?
I’m asking this as someone who has one friend on the site who posts a picture of herself every couple of days without any kind of explanation. It’s always the same pose; only the clothes change. I asked her about it and she said that seeing herself smile as she improves her life makes her feel good. I can buy that. However, she also posts a lot of other pictures of friends and family, and lots of food pictures (something I usually love to see but I don’t like a lot of her food lol).
I mentioned that most of the accounts are Russian or Asian women; but all of them aren’t. I get followed by a lot of fitness women also; that one’s confusing because I’m certainly not the icon of fitness… sigh… I do post a lot of pictures of my food, some of it homemade, and I’ll use that as a hashtag, but a lot of that stuff wouldn’t be considered healthy either… well, I guess it’s healthier than the stuff I buy out as most restaurants… sometimes.
I don’t end up following the overwhelming majority of these people. The same goes for restaurants, which also seem to follow me, but those have business logos. Like most of my social media accounts, I have way more people following me than I follow.
It’s also strange that as I’m working towards more peace and happiness by reducing the number of people I’m seeing on social media sites (this weekend was spent going through LinkedIn) that more people are starting to follow me on some of these same sites. It’s like I’m dealing with Newton’s Third Law of Motion, where the more I try to kill the more people there are trying to connect with me.
What are the bulk of you seeing as it pertains to your Instagram account? Is it as confusing as what I seem to be seeing or do you believe your accounts are just fine? I’m not worried about any of it; just seems strange is all. Let me know; I’m outta here. 🙂
Well, Mitch, you must just be interesting. I joined Instagram for the same reason I use Facebook. I lurk and love my kids and (mostly) my grandkids. I am lucky if they follow me…let alone any strangers. And since I rarely post, I’m sure I don’t draw attention. BTW, Facebook is seldom used by the younger ones. It has become the middle generation platform, I think. I don’t use either in connection with my blogs. Once in a great while I will post an appropriate link on FB if I think family might be interested. Twitter is my only blog connection.
I used to like Facebook a lot but part of the thrill has dwindled… and it seems not just for me. I love pictures so I love Instagram. It’s just really weird seeing some of the people who are suddenly following me there that I don’t know. If I were 20 years younger I might actually believe they were interested in me. lol
Well it seems as though you have women who are maybe in the oldest profession following you. They just do it online now. I really hope not.
I have not seen any new followers lately. Unless I follow them. It would be nice to have new followers but not yet anyway. Time will tell what kind of followers you have. like I said I hope I am wrong.
If they’re really prostitutes then they’re gonna be disappointed in me. lol At least you and I are connected there so you get to see all my food pictures. 🙂
Hello Mitch
Great post ! And very insightful and interesting. Hey Mitch just because we’re older doesn’t mean we aren’t still attractive. I joined Instagram about six months ago and didn’t really work for me,maybe I will give it another shot. I basically am on Twitter and Facebook those are my two go -to social media sites. I had to check you out man and happy holidays.
Hey Darrell. First, I hope when you said you had to check me out that it meant you clicked on that Instagram banner over there on the right. I’m about as real as one can get over there… stuff just fascinates me lol
As for the women… dude, these women aren’t interested in me. They’re some type of fake accounts for the most part, I don’t understand the reasoning behind them but I’m not fretting over it either. I just find it curious.
Hi Mitch, I’ve been cleaning my profiles too – Instagram and Facebook – getting rid of folks I don’t really know (past bloggers) as both sites were getting overwhelming for me to look at.
I too get these woman on Instagram and Pinterest following me. I think they must be advertising something, sex sells – right? That is what I think is happening there Mitch.
Eye Candy 🙂
Definitely eye candy Lisa but it just seems so weird… maybe they’re just shooting for the numbers so they can attract advertisers to their page.
I hate to burst your bubble, Mitch, but the hot chicks of Instagram love me, too.
They are the millennial version of the 900 number. Not so sure about “prostitutes,” but most are cam girls and they’re probably involved in credit card fraud. I report them instantly when they follow me; I don’t even blink. That’s probably why there aren’t many of their spam comments on my photos. 😉 Betting word’s out – stay away from that one!
Holly, this would only burst my bubble if I believed they were real… and that I was this Adonis they wanted. lol Still, if they were cam girls or anything else, why don’t they have a link in their profile? Oh well, no matter; some I block but others I figure will go away soon enough.
Do they have a Kik QR code in their profiles?
The rest of this comment is nothing but filler; I see you hired the Spam Bouncer I fired a while back…
I don’t see anything… links, QR codes or phone numbers… at least for most of them.
As for the site… I had to do a total revamp of the blog yesterday. You might not notice it, but this is a totally new theme… well, it’s an old theme but it’s newer than the one I had. It works with the program I used on my other blogs so I could attain great speed and still allow CommentLuv to work, which it hasn’t been doing for a long time without my noticing. I’ve also been seeing an increase in spam over the past couple of weeks so I decided to “up” the number of words needed to alleviate some of that… and it seems to be working! 🙂
Instagram has a lot of fake accounts. It makes for sell the services as increase followers, likes and re-post. I agree with you, we need clean our Instagram profiles sometime. Thanks for sharing
Ah, I hadn’t thought of that Thomas, but that shows long range planning, something I never gave them any credit for.