If you follow more than just family and close friends on Instagram, you’ll probably be seeing a variation of one of these pleas on your feed in the near future:
That arrow—there’s usually an arrow—is pointing to the ellipsis located above every post in a mobile Instagram feed that leads to an option for turning on post notifications, meaning followers will be notified each time a new post is uploaded.
In an attempt to avoid getting buried by the algorithm, accounts are pleading with their fans to turn on post notifications. Note that this doesn’t mean that the accounts will be unaffected by the algorithm — it means that you will get a notification on your phone every time the account posts a photo.
But you won’t see one of those arrows on Instagram queen Selena Gomez’s account. Or Kylie Jenner’s. (Note: She has since added a post containing the dreaded arrow.) A-list celebrities with healthy follower counts will probably be immune to the change, and their fans will always be seeing their posts. But the lower-ranked celebrities—the ones with tens of thousands (not tens of millions) of followers—are getting worried. Their precious medium that once treated all accounts equally, will soon be a popularity contest. And reality stars can’t compete with Rihanna.
Take Bachelor contestant Caila Quinn. She has 205,000 followers—a big deal to you or me—but not enough to guarantee a spot in her followers’ feed. What does that mean? I’ll show you what it means:
Or Jessica Szohr, the actress you might recognize from CSI: Miami or interviews with Julianne Hough. Even 673,000 followers isn’t enough to keep her comfortable.
People who aren’t famous outside of the Internet—the lifestyle and fashion bloggers whose jobs are to share their perfect homes and bodies with the world—are particularly worried. After doing a little preliminary research, I’d say they make up the bulk of today’s ‘fraidy cats.
Don’t know who Matthew Stephen Smith (126k followers) is, but based on the photo, he works out, conditions regularly, and is scared shitless.
This woman? No clue. But she’s got 60,000 followers and is shaking in her boots.
Abbas Mourad (don’t bother asking) even made a video tutorial for his 665,000 followers:
Feldman’s advice is to avoid adding more notifications to your life by refusing to turn them on for individual accounts. A good idea, perhaps! But, hey, can I ask you for a favor real quick?
(Be sure to klick play, kweens!)
UPDATE:
Hmmmmm. “Right now”?
