"Only 10 Followers?" my oldest niece scoffed at my Instagram profile, "...and a whole lotta posts!"

It was like High School all over again; Quantity, not quality, ruled. I was on Summer Vacation with my entire extended family stuck in a huge cabin, and I was trying to connect with my teenaged nieces via social networks. Thankfully, they also use Instagram, and this was a way to connect with them on a regular basis, follow their life, and watch them grow up from thousands of miles away.

When it comes to social networking, I understand that I can't compete with a teenage girl in this modern day of everything-connectedness; I was still somewhat ashamed of my dismal Instagram fandom.

My prolific Instagrams were like life; occasionally nothing, then a whirlwind of everything. My Instagrams marked places all over Philly, bright colors, exquisite sights. I kept my descriptions short and to the point, I didn't #hashtag (I should, though - #hashtagsbringviewsandfans).

Even though I personally knew everyone on my list of followers, I needed to quickly boost that lowly number.

Revenge is Served, for a Dollar!

I checked my favorite task site Fiverr, and found a bunch of Instagram followers available for $5. Being the internet cheapskate that I am, and thinking a thousand-person bump in my profile might look fishy, I perused the knock-off OneDollarr to find a suitable vendor. Sure enough, I could pick up 600 followers for the lowly price of a buck. A quick round trip to PayPal (an actual micropayment!), and the ego-boosting began.

Above is the screen cap of the transaction as it went down, and their proposed delivery date made me expected a days' wait, but the job was done in under two hours. I refreshed my profile to discover I'd gotten 601 new fans. This inexpensive solution can be used to impress future Instagram stalkers to marvel at your huge audience. While the interaction with these purchased fans will be nonexistent (no likes), the boost in social cred is worth the nominal cost.

Here's a screen cap of some of these new-found fans. I'm guessing these are probably bot accounts that are maintained by the author, or some other hacker. With a little bit of scripting, deploying new authenticated users and assigning following status is probably only a couple of keystrokes.

Is It Worth It?

Next time by beautiful nieces stalk me on Instagram, I hope they note that I now have twice as many followers as they do. That'll show them. Now hopefully, they don't read my blog; Shout-out if they do: Hey Girls!