Photo Caption: Don’t believe everything you see on Instagram. This is Dominique Druckman at a photo shoot that makes it look like she’s relaxing at a spa.
Review: Do you want to be famous? A compelling new documentary from veteran tech journalist Nick Bilton shows just how fake social media can be.
Dominique Druckman reclines on a tuft of red and white rose petals, her eyes closed, her skin dewy, a tranquil smile tugging at the corners of her perfectly tinted pink lips. According to her Instagram tag, Druckman is recharging at a Hollywood spa, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s in a backyard, awkwardly propped onto a small plastic kiddie pool filled with flowers. A photographer stands over her, angling for the perfect shot. The kind that makes Druckman’s followers believe she’s living a luxurious life they could also have … if they just buy the expensive sunglasses and sneakers she’s hawking.
Thing is, many of her followers aren’t real people. They’re bots.
Druckman knows this. She’s part of a social experiment chronicled in the compelling new HBO documentary Fake Famous, written and directed by veteran technology journalist Nick Bilton.
For the film — his first — Bilton attempts to turn Druckman and two other LA residents with relatively small Instagram followings into social media influencers by purchasing an army of fake followers and bots to “engage” with their posts. The three were chosen from around 4,000 people who responded to a casting call asking one simple question: “Do you want to be famous?”
The documentary, on HBO now, feels plodding at times (or maybe it’s just tedious spending time with fame chasers), but it explores intriguing questions for our influencer-influenced times. Will people look at the trio differently as their follower counts rise? Will their lives change for the better? And in a world where numbers equal fame, what is the true nature (and cost) of fame anyway?
The questions are worth exploring for anyone who’s felt a tinge of envy scrolling through feeds of glamorous getaways and perfectly made-up miens. At least one of the newly anointed influencers discovers a soaring follower count isn’t good for his mental health.
On some level, most of us understand that social media presents carefully curated versions of other people’s realities and that influencers’ living rooms aren’t always bathed in the perfect sunlight. Last year, for example, Instagram influencer Natalia Taylor faked a Bali vacation with pics snapped at Ikea to remind her followers not to believe everything they see. And who could forget the disastrous Fyre Festival hyped by the influencer crowd?
But Bilton, formerly of The New York Times…
