Instagram question

I have always wondered about this. Maybe it is one photo shoot and they mine it for a long time but there are so many locations. They aren't all selfies so I wonder who is taking them.

Can be friends or it can be a delay timer on the smartphone or camera.

How hard is it for gorgeous young people to snap photos of each other and look good? Why, it's not difficult at all, thank god.

Narcissism is fascinating, isn't it!

I know someone like this (he's not even that attractive but aspires to be an Instaho). He has a pop up stand on the back of his phone and the camera has a timer (which is is standard to most phone cams).

He'll take dozens of shots of the same pose, then pore over each one deciding which is worthy to post. After he puts it through a filter to remove his acne scars and make his hair look fuller, of course.

Yeah, those noodly tripods are pretty popular among the content creators.

Some of them make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or more from doing this. And the only reason that is possible is because of DL-type people who fawn over them and do their public relations for them. We call them narcissists—but then so many people make celebrities of this endless parade of young naked people. It’s the public who created them.

Many “influencers” are friends with other influencers. They follow one another around and they take photos of one another for posting. It’s not that complicated, and by and large no more equipment is needed than a phone with a high-quality camera, which is any iPhone or almost any Android phone.

I was in Honolulu last winter with my father (who was 70 at the time) and seemingly everywhere we went there was a beautiful (but emaciated) young woman who looked Japanese taking videos and photos of herself. My father thought it was funny and bizarre. From the ocean to the retail areas to the jungle to a bus tour of the whole island, there she was, alone and smiling for her own camera. She sat on the edge of a pier with a selfie stick, awkwardly contorting, and my dad asked if he should offer to take her photo. I told him she may look alone and desperate but it’s very likely she is wealthy, possibly making millions off of being a social media influencer. He grasped the concept in concept but said he didn’t understand why people would give money to pretty people for being pretty. I told him they make ad revenue, like TV shows, magazines, etc., and he just couldn’t understand why anyone would pay someone to support their narcissism. But that’s what it is.

Initially, the concept of fashion modeling was to hang clothes on a living person in a private setting to show how good they look on a person. The person was supposed to be a clothes hanger, basically invisible. That morphed into ‘supermodels,’ made rich and famous for looking good and drawing attention to fashion labels. Now they just take the clothes off and funnel the money directly to their accounts.

I hate to be hated for observing reality, but it’s kind of annoying to see so many threads here that 1) say “OMG LOOK AT THIS HOT DUDE ON INSTAGRAM” (or TikTok, or Only Fans or Chaturbate), and then others lamenting that cocky young narcissists do this.

They only do it because of places like this and a society that idolizes them. It’s the new dime-a-dozen Michelangelo’s David.

This forum has become a primary free advertiser for Chaturbate whores. I would never have known that site exists were it not for the now-nightly primetime ads linking directly to young prostitutes jerking off for your money.

I always block the assholes who post those "look at this hot guy" posts. They are only adding to the problem.

Disgusting that the successful "models" make that much money. Makes me sick.

Don’t they cultivate boyfriends just for that reason to have a photographer?

Who are the biggest celebrities in the world? Movie stars like Leo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts? Pop stars like Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande? Power couples like Beyonce and Jay Z? Nope! It's the Kardashians who perfected the 'look-at-me-even-if-I have-no-discernible-talent' narcism. The world has changed and those that refuse to accept it are in denial. They are more famous worldwide and make more money than anyone in movies, music or sport who have lost their mystique. Kim Kardashian is now the most famous woman in the world after Queen Elizabeth. Hard pill to swallow, but true.

Ack! I wouldn't trade one Gabor for all those trashy Kardashians. Not on your life!

R9 I currently live in Rome, Italy and every other tourist couple you see is of a generically pretty girl with her significantly less attractive boyfriend trudging behind her with bags, suitcases and camera equipment. I've lost the number of times I've seen these girls stop and smile for a happy selfie in the middle of giving their hapless man an earful about something he did or didn't do.

Instagram boyfriend

All you need is a tripod, OP.

Some of them take selfies in mirrors, as well. Often in restrooms that have big mirrors. It always kind of amuses me to think about some guy standing in a public bathroom, at a restaurant or an office building, and thinking "Man, I look hot. This lighting is great. Gonna take a selfie for Instagram." I mean think about the level of self-involvement that goes into that selfie you see on that guy's Instagram.

There are different levels of it. I mean some guys actually hire professional photographers (especially if they're actors or models). Some people's instagrams are a mix of these professional photos, pics taken by friends, and selfies that often are enhanced.

I have no problem following good looking people if I also like them as people (at least how they present themselves). Some are self-deprecating, or focus on their friends, or places they visit, their pets, maybe not always including themselves in the pics. Some have pics of themselves taking pratfalls or messing up in some way, which is more interesting/funny. The ones I grow to despise are the ones that just post pic after pic of themselves looking good, as if we're just supposed to find this endlessly fascinating. You really have to be a die-hard fan to keep following those people.

Meeting them in person is always a good reminder of the power of good lighting.

Anywhere you can sit the phone and put the timer on. Very simple. No one is hiring photographers like that. Nobody cares about professional quality. Just be hot. It's the power of good lighting, angles, filters, and facetune.

r16 and good angles. Some guys are shorter and scrawnier then what is seen online. Gay porn models are perfect examples of this. Filters, lighting, angles hide the fact that they are 5'6 - 5'9, on a cocktail of steroids, and take 100s of different photos and video takes, and editing to get the hot person you THINK they are, but in reality are quite average looking.

Social media reinforces and reflects the narcissism endemic in society today. Once the gyms reopen, take a look around at all the guys who preen in front of mirrors, raising their shirts to check out the burn on their abs. Most of these guys will not be able to survive outside the gym, because they have no skills beyond counting reps and sets and deciding whether it's back, leg (which most skip), or chest day. They have little social skills, because their earplugs tune out the world, and also they have no interests in anything except going to the gym. In short, they have no depth or character.

There's nothing sweeter than screwing a tight arse, but when I do I want a man who gives me everything there is to him...open himself emotionally, intellectually...with these guys it's like screwing a mannequin.

Sounds nice R19. But I’ll stick with worshiping (and paying) young hotties with tight bodies.

I’ve seen a lot of what R12 describes too. Boyfriends turned into slave photographers for narcissistic Instacunts. Never any photos of them together, looking happy. It’s all about her, and the pout. I feel a little sorry for these guys sometimes. They really have to work hard to get some pussy.

Their johns.

I know, R19 For me, there’s nothing that turns me on than a man with charisma, charm and intellect showing he’s attracted to me. I have never been able to turn down those types even when I should. But bland, dumb, airhead pretty boys? You can have them.

R19 It worked for Andrew McCarthy!

What's worse are the average or below average people thinking they can also do this. A friend of a friend is a fat frau in her 40s, who repeatedly posts the same two poses: one of her in 3/4 profile looking coyly into the camera, and the other with her doing the same as that, but sipping a straw, to make her fat fucking face look thinner.

Both poses are photographed with her holding the camera at arms reach above her, so you can't see her triple neck. Every. Single. One! I want to be a cunt and post a comment asking why she has a drone following her taking pics of her.

R25 uggo people get away with a lot less.

[quote] one of her in 3/4 profile looking coyly into the camera, and the other with her doing the same as that, but sipping a straw, to make her fat fucking face look thinner.

The "classic" style where the phone (never a camera) is held really high overhead so when they invariably keep their head level while looking upward at the phone their eyes look huge but their jowls look "teensy-weensy"?

If you go back to Shawn Mendes and Cameron Dallas when they were 16 year olds on Vine (yeah they were underage, but you knew who they were), posing shirtless or in wet t-shirts there was this acceptable, new narcissism that I don't think was really a thing pre-social media. Regular kids in the suburbs who weren't even adults, willingly sexualizing themselves for the consumption of the world. 8 years (give or take) later, Mendes is a literal rockstar, selling out arenas, Cameron has 25M Instagram followers, goes to Milan every year to walk the runway for D&G, just did a month in a B'way show. Brent Rivera, even, has millions of followers and they all make loads of money. Some people got famous on Instagram, TV shows cast them because they know they have millions of followers who will watch the shows. I don't blame people for trying to make themselves famous too, I guess. But it's also somewhat narcissistic, weird, and creepy.

A friend works for a Broadway director and said it's very common now to cast actors based on the number of their social media followers.

Personally, I have seen the wives or girlfriends of Swoll Bros doing this for them at the gym.

Online, I know that both V-Squad Vince and Mike Thurston make enough money to pay camera men.

I know Hayden Monteleone gets his wife to hold the camera and even appear in a lot of Youtube and OnlyFans videos. Who knows if she gets a cut?

I know some Youtube/Instahos like Diesel Josh get multiple people to take the camera in shifts for them. Sometimes it's Josh's wife/g.f., but I've also seen two, different faggot muscle worshippers doing videography for Josh and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it for free, even though that's probably bad for them.

R5, I know two guys in real life who are aspiring just like that. They both have boyfriends who they rope in to take their photos. It can be so hilarious. They get them to take these ridiculous photos of them crossing the road, then castigate them for not taking it well enough, and end up going back to cross the road nine or ten times, until they get a photo they're happy with.

As you can see, it can be hilarious if you're in the right mood, but it's also fucking annoying to be around. Plus they're not interested in talking about anything except themselves and their online journey. I ended up questioning one guy on that and he shrugged and laughed and said: "Everyone knows I'm high maintenance, this is just who I am", and I thought, well good for you but I'd prefer to have friends I can actually talk to, and I stopped hanging around them so much.

I hate sounding cruel, and everyone really is beautiful in their own way, but neither of these guys look anything like the kinds of Instahoes they want to be, and never will. It's all really sad. I think they tend to pick boyfriends with low self-esteem on purpose.

R19 that is so true. The past couple of years I seem to be on the radar for guys like that, but the excitement of how nice they look naked loses its thrill pretty quickly when the sex is really, I dunno, soulless. And they are incredibly selfish in bed. However much guys think they might desire it, believe me, it's disappointing. Then at the end of last year I had sex with a guy who had "let himself go" if you like, embraced the beer gut and all, and when I came I felt like I nearly flew out of my body, it was so good.

r7 is just a Luddite who thinks she can fault or change humans for their nature.

The new "culture"is just an extension of lust and you'll never succeed in extracting lust from human nature. You'll never shame everyone for it or stop partaking of it yourself.

You should just focus on the virtues you prefer, live and let whores be whores.

P.S. Your dad is full of shit about not paying models, porn stars and actors. He watches their shows and looks at their pictures. Even if he's stealing it, he's supporting it and indulging. There's no way he was never influenced by a sexy ad or sat through commercials for a TV show.

[quote] A friend works for a Broadway director and said it's very common now to cast actors based on the number of their social media followers.

I'm sure that's one reason Cameron Dallas was cast in Mean Girls recently, it's short-term and a publicity stunt. Not saying they can't also be good, or fun to watch. Alex Lange was cast on the TV series Code Black in a recurring role, he had no acting experience but he has a few million Insta followers. He was good but I'm sure he got cast partly for his # of followers, and of course they want good looking people on TV and instahoes usually are.

The example you chose is so interesting, OP, because the poses are so similar and they're all or mostly medium-close shots. The guy doesn't even change up his poses that much or the distance of the camera, to make it interesting.

OP, I actually had an interesting conversation with a gal a few months ago who actually shed some light on the social media industry. Believe it or not (truly, as I really can't confirm anything she told me, aside from my own observations), but there is a growing industry that promotes social media accounts. The gal I talked to works in a large company's advertising department, and one of her main job is to get social media "influencers" to showcase their products in their posts. Thus, she has to contact a lot of social media personalities. But she said that the contact is usually not the influencer themselves, but rather a representative from a social media production company. Basically, these companies hire models for the posts, costume/dress them, write up the text that make up the post, there are location and set people, very similar to a movie or TV production company. One of the influencers she works with is a well-known MLB player's wife, her husband plays for my states team. When she contacted her, it wasn't actually her she got ahold of, but rather a representative from PR-type firm that represented her. This company basically sheduled the "shoot" that would include her employer's product. In that instance, the influencer was actually a real person, as she was truly the wife of an actual ball-player. In other instances she has dealt with accounts where the "face" of the SM account is entirely fake. She told me a story of trying to get a product placement deal with this college professor gal whose account focuses a lot on frau-like interests, family, travel, healthy living, etc.. She found out the whole thing was completely fabricated; the gal whose face represented the profile was actually just a model, not an actual professor. The traveling was all made up, often times on sets or stand-in places to look like like some far away destination.

That's not to say that there aren't actual, genuine SM accounts out there. But she did say that the majority of well-followed and developed accounts are fake on some level, and curated and produced by third-party companies. I actually noticed this with the profile of that weird muscly gay doctor guy (I can't remember his name) that's received attention in a few threads on here. A lot of people remarked on how he never actually seems to be in a hospital actually working, always traveling, partying, working out, etc.. Further the text of the posts never seemed well-written enough to be that of an actual, practicing doctor. My belief is that his account was fake, the dude was just a model, and the whole doctor/self-awareness persona was faked to create a heart-warming story that would attract followers.

A bunch of sickos.

The sad thing is that many of them are horrible people probably neglecting their kids and other responsibilities because this shit takes up so much time and energy.

There is a CONSTANT flow of hot pix from this guy, and though I guess I find that off-putting one one level, on another level it's....not off-putting. (P.S. the thumbnail that appeared below when I entered the link is one of the worst pix he has posted.)

TL;DR -- So many hot young guys and none of them want to fuck me -- Lonely DLEG

The guy OP posted isn’t even that hot. He’s fat.

Ugh and he has one of those blackband arm tattoos. Trashy AND ubiquitous.

He is beautiful. Look at that hair. Stop hating.

[QUOTE] He is beautiful. Look at that hair. Stop hating.

I’m not hating. He’s a porker.

I have a question re IG. A suggestion rather. And that is, people whose accounts are private should not be able to follow others without unlocking.

R1 the photo mining process you suggest is actually accurate. One of my friends personally knows several social media personalities involved in fitness and has stated as fact that most of the more popular fitness personalities on social media do a series of shoots over the course of a few days, during which they are at their peak fitness level. They basically assemble a small crew and take thousands of photos in various locations and outfits during that short span and then post them over a long period of time. And during that time, they're not nearly as fit or "pretty" as they are in the photos. Some are quite obvious about it, in that there will be some glaring error in continuity (e.g. they'll post one where they're super tan but then a day later post something in which they are not) that largely throws a wrench in the "real-time" feel. One of the fitness guys I follow will post photos haphazardly in which tattoos on his body appear then disappear in the next photo.

R39 Um, no. Did you look at all his pics? Hot is in the eye of the beholder, but he's not fat.

He's cute af

What I’m confused about IG is the capacity to make money from it. I get the whole product placement and sponsorship income, but many have implied they make money from the traffic to the site itself. I understand that with YouTube, but is there money being made just by visits, comments and likes as well?

r40 yep and takes photos at huntington beach. Another IG person that seems like he has a good life but in reality shares a cramped apartment with five other presumably IG whores, and survives on dollar store food.

Of course he couldalso be a trust fund kid or have a sugar daddy.

Okay, who would you rather fuck? One of these vapid, immature, narcissistic, Instagram men with their gym-honed bodies? Or a man like this man was...Al Worden? He clearly took care of himself, but I bet dollars to donuts, he never raised his shirt to look at the burn on his abs at the gym!

No gym body for this man...but he was fit as fuck! And I bet the pillow talk was more interesting than the fuck!

Dunno, but I agree, plus they're ironically all the same ones who flit around like nelleys making maxi-skirts out of their gym towels facing their lockers as they try to slide up their boxer briefs to avoid the fear and shock of any fellow men possibly catching sight inadvertently of their man-vaginas. Go figure.

R47 From what I've heard, no, there is no money paid out by IG itself for likes or views to your profile. I wrote R44 and based on what I know (which isn't complete information, mind you), any money that can be made is in endorsements and product placements that are paid by the companies making the products, similar to what R35 said . One thing to note is that unless you have multiple millions of followers (so like a movie star or a well-known celebrity like Kim K.), product endorsements aren't really worth much. I do now that one of the previously mentioned fitness guys does have a deal with some protein powder company where he gets a certain dollar amount if photos featuring the product gets a certain number of likes. Then following that he gets a small percentage of the sales that occur following the post for a limited amount of time. For example, if a photo he posts of the product gets, say, 1000 likes, he gets maybe $200 to 500 and for the following week he gets maybe 5% of sales that come through the link in his profile. That may seem low, but the reality is, people really don't buy things off Instagram with the same frequency they do off of something like amazon or a store app (like Nordstroms or Macys). Thus, a vendor isn't going to give a huge chunk of profits to such a small amount of sales. The people above claiing that there are Asian influencers making hundred of thousands off their IG accounts are really not true. it's possible of course, but highly unlikely for your average popular IG personality. Now if you're G. Paltrow or a Kardashian, that's a different story.

Many of the popular personalities on Instagram have accounts across platforms. If they're on Insta they're also on YouTube, TikTok, etc. Most of us have seen some of the teen/20something ones do ads. Other Instagram stars do fashion shoots for fashion magazines or for clothing lines, often in foreign countries. Some definitely make a living (or make good side money) on Instagram. You will see them hawking everything from Mountain Dew, to face creams, to dating apps, to lip balm. Maybe some of you don't follow the people who do this stuff, it's often the younger ones in the film/tv business, fashion, or photography.

R48 You talking about the German guy?

As someone who has visited Instahoe-heavy cities, it is one of three things:

1) A friend/partner if it is a public setting

2) A tripod if it is a private setting (their living room, kitchen, bathroom)

3) A selfie in the mirror or at learned angles

Also keep in mind iPhones take excellent shots that serve as a good base for various apps to filter away blemishes, bad lighting, random objects/people in the shot. The amount of time that goes into one post is astonishing.

Those Instagram boyfriends are nothing but unpaid assistants for the instacunts.

They get paid off with pussy.

R56 Is bad?

^You just want to slap them and tell them to grow a spine.

Gay men are among the worst. I met a guy on Scruff whose photo album was the usual portfolio of selfies, but he had used a few of the photos to display GRIDS of even ore selfies. A guy I dated used to send me at least five selfies a day. All the same basic poses and expressions. He actually still sends them occasionally and I laugh because he sends them after posting them on Instagram and not yielding the attention he was hoping for.

Sadly being gay and vanity go hand in hand more times than not.

R52, can you name some examples? I'm not asking rhetorically, but just curious as I am unaware. I realize there are celebrities with social media accounts that do what you describe, but I don't know of any personalities who are solely famous due to their SM accounts who have the income stream you suggest. Obviously someone like a Logan Paul does such things, but I'd argue that he's surpassed the social media figure into something more of a general celebrity (albeit a stupid one).

It just occurred to me that while they could not appear more different on the outside, on the inside, every Instaho is the same as Donald Trump.

Reflect on that as you fuel their egos.

R61 I'm not sure what you're saying - what income stream do I suggest? Stars tend to make the most money because they have the most followers. Someone who's mainly a social media star would be Alex Lange, though he's become an actor and a Calvin Klein model. Doesn't make what Kim Kardashian makes but has a nice car, nice house.

I mean a lot of his endorsements maybe aren't on regular instagram, they can be in his stories, or on YT. But he promotes Tinder (recently), anti-acne face lotion, Calvin Klein, movies (he gets tix to premieres and promotes the film. I'm sure if he wears a brand, they probably pay him. There are social media stars like Nash Grier or Brent Rivera who make a lot more money probably.