Are we living inside an episode of Black Mirror, or are we living in the age of social media genius?
We’ve all posted selfies online that have gone criminally underappreciated, and now, if you happen to find yourself in downtown Moscow, you’ll be able to rectify this situation by going to a vending machine where you can buy a few hundred likes.
This machine sells 100 Instagram likes for 50 Russian rubles (69p to those of you that are more familiar with sterling), or 100 followers for 100 rubles (£1.38).
Although this might sound like a strange and ethically ambiguous thing to do, the service is completely legal as the company, called Snatap and owned by partners Nazir Yusifov and Avaz Shabutdinov, insists that all likes and follows are distributed by real people from accounts they’ve created and assured everyone that they don’t come from bot-farms.
As reported by DazedDigital, the company debuted their first ‘like’ machine in St Petersburg in November 2016 but it’s only recently that they have gone viral and there are now plans for these machines to be set up in Poland, Germany and the USA.
Whilst it’s seemingly harmless to buy Instagram likes, these machines do reflect the effort that many of us to go in order to maintain #lifegoals on our social media accounts. They also demonstrate how, now more than ever, there is enough of a demand for having a certain level social media status that some of us are willing to invest our money in creating and maintaining a carefully fashioned and intentionally enviable façade.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.