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A new Instagram account has being busting Instagram influencers who flaunt extreme wealth and lavish lifestyles in order to scam their followers.
The account @BallerBusters emerged last February and it has been calling out frauds on Instagram ever since. With the hashtag #FlexOffenders, the account busts those influencers who call themselves self-entrepreneurs and flaunt a lavish and expensive lifestyle on their profiles to convince their followers to buy their online classes which are a complete scam, Business Insider reports.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B31B0vTF3q8/
The New York Times reported that those classes cost thousands of dollars and they don’t live up to the hype. The influencers themselves don’t teach those classes, instead they hire subcontractors.
Most of the scammers have corporate headshots as their profile picture, a large following, and their feeds are full of expensive cars, jets and yachts.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0rPSFVlL2q/
After examining legal filings, screenshotting the text messages of those who were scammed, and talking to industry experts, @BallerBusters exposes the scammers through Instagram stories, the New York Times reported.
The account’s administrator told The New York Times that they are not a page covering scandals or providing reviews of such courses, but that they do investigative journalism.
Millennials have clearly changed the way money is seen, with social media playing a huge part on defining what wealth looks like.
“What affluent millennials prioritize is the awesome group photo that can be posted on their Facebook wall,” Faw wrote on a Forbes piece.
The Instagram account @rkoi (Rich Kids of the Internet) clearly shows how Instagram is the platform to brag about your wealth.
Social media is not only used to flaunt, but to become an influence. Frauds are taking advantage of the influencer clout and have created a new way to scam the naive.
It is predicted that more scammer influencers are going to rise now that Instagram is deciding whether to hide likes on posts in the US, Business Insider reported.
If Instagram decides to hide likes on posts, then @BallerBusters workload could more than double.
