Yes, you read that right. Forget those sleazy websites that promise to, for a small fortune, sell you fake followers. You can now indulge in fake likes to boost your Instagram popularity at the touch of a vending-machine button. It’s instantaneous, and it’s cheap, too. For as little as 89 cents, you can get 100 likes on any of your (probably pitiful) Instagram post. If you’re really desperate for attention and have an extra $850 to throw away, you can get 150,000 instant (fake) followers, who will gladly offer 150 (fake) likes per post. If you need physical proof of your newfound fan base, you can also ask the machine to print out your Instagram snaps. Nothing like a cold, opinion-void distribution machine to boost your ego like starting a California LLC, right?
Snaptap is the Russian company responsible for this deceiving invention. They currently have about 20 of these vending machines in operation across the country. In addition to offering likes and followers for Instagram (and other social media sites such as Twitter), the machines also help you take the perfect selfie or video and print pictures with captions or emoji. And, apparently, the list is growing.
The most amazing part? The machines seem to be gaining in popularity and be generally praised by the masses. One Russian Instagram user wrote: “You can now buy likes and followers through a vending machine in the mall under the Kremlin wall. This is the cyberpunk we deserve.” One responses to this post praised the concept as “genius”, while another enquired as to where such vending machine could be found. Looks like Snaptap came up with one heck of a good idea, even though it may seem to some of us to be on the wrong side of morality, and not an exceptionally great model for younger (and older, it seems) kids. Or adults, for that matter.
If you’re in Russia, or if, god forbid, those machines get so successful that they start popping up in other countries, you should know that there is a catch. Other than the fact that you’re basically lying to boost your popularity, Snaptap reserves the right to add you as a friend on social networks and send requests to your friends, all in the interest of sending them advertisement for their services. So if you’re not above getting fake likes and followers but still value the privacy of your friends, you should think twice about buying those likes.