Abhishek Shukla

Famous

Word Count: 3,858

For reader's discretion

This story contains themes that in author's understanding can be deeply distressing. Please read at your own discretion. If you or someone you know is struggling with the issues that these themes relate to, please seek help from professionals. Please prioritize your well-being over everything else.

1.4M views. 14,484 likes. 597 comments.

He refreshed the feed. There was a new comment.

‘Dope 🔥 🔥’

He loved the comment and replied with a heart emoji. He refreshed again:

1.5M views. 15,523 likes. 598 comments.

He kept the phone down cheerfully and moved to the kitchen to get himself a coffee. He was delighted; this was the best response he had ever received on the internet. His past reels never got him past the 1M views mark. He read through scores of blogs, watched hundreds of videos to figure out the ways to make his reels go viral. There wasn’t a trick left that he didn’t try. And after all the effort, it was this reel, the one that didn’t abide by most of the tricks.

He knew he would have to master Reels, as the Insta algorithm treated it as a priority. He first started with informative tips-and-tricks reels. ‘5 websites that every movie lover must know’, ‘7 destinations where you can land without a VISA’, ‘3 ways to turn your Chrome browser in a beast’, etc. It would’ve been easier to make movie mashups. Just add a few video clips, top it with a low-fi soundtrack, add one effect, and the application would prepare a mix for you. It was possible to post multiple such reels in a day, but he wished to perform, have his face on it. He already had a job and he didn’t wish to convert this into one.

Those reels didn’t work for him as the number of views never crossed a thousand. He prepared a 3-point lighting setup, got himself a great microphone, prepared a beautiful background, groomed himself to look the best, and edited the videos to perfection. These factors did boost the performance, getting him an average of 2-4k views, but still didn’t get him the views he expected. After 3 months of posting two reels a week, he realized that to touch the next milestone, he would have to post more frequently.

Those reels demanded research. He had to go through blogs to find legit info and had to write a script that could fit everything he intends within a limited duration. Even when he increased the number of reels from two to three a week, the growth remained sluggish, and after a while, he felt that even after losing sleep and putting massive effort, his performance remained not more than reading a few lines enthusiastically. He switched to making reels on trends.

He did everything that trended, whether it was lip-syncing to a song, or copying a hook step, or recording a slo-mo on a BGM track, or changing 20 t-shirts within 30 seconds. He prepared a reel almost every day. He found it difficult to match up to the level at which seasoned Instagrammers operated. He had to record a dozen times to get his sync right, and still, his slo-mo often appeared off-beat, and some of the dance steps remained impossible for him to copy.

He ended up spending more time on getting the technicalities right than he previously was at finding the info. But as he continued for a few weeks, he found himself getting better at the game. He could make two reels in the time he took to create one. Within the next few months, the views on each of his reels easily crossed the 5k mark and a few of them—that the algorithm pushed—ended up crossing the 20k mark.

He shifted gears and increased the activity on his account. He responded to as many comments as he could. He posted each of his reel in the Stories, on the connected Facebook account, on Twitter, and used the most famous hashtags, even when they didn’t make any sense—he used the hashtag #OOTD in a reel that featured him blinking his eyes in sync with repeated sounds of a gunshot. He missed no chance of tagging a celebrity. He often tagged Jeff Bezos in his unboxing reels.

He realized that the number of trends available for men was lesser in comparison to women and the most famous trends belonged to women. That left him with no scope of losing out on even a single trend. He once collaborated with a female influencer to tap into the remaining trends; that reel performed better than his other ones, but he didn’t find himself enjoying the shared success. He continued alone and soon found his views to stabilize around the same numbers.

He knew he would have to soon shift gears again; if he didn’t, the algorithm might place him as one of the static accounts—one with a constant number of views. Being a static account was worse than a crashing account—one with declining views. For Insta, a crashing account was like a leaving partner, and its algorithm tried its best to save the relationship by promoting their content. But a static account was like a safe partner, the algorithm knew the person is already putting effort and would not leave anyway. He wanted to become an alpha account; one which constantly gained followers and views, and eventually a Blue Tick.

The transition from a static to an alpha account was like crossing the friendzone; it demanded more than the usual safe moves that anyone could play. One had to develop a niche, an x-factor that brought people back to their account, that gained them fans. An easy way to identify such an account was to see if it was the mother of any trend. Though he had gathered around 25k followers and had gained an average of 50-80k views, he still had no trend that he could call his own.

He thought that the key to finding his niche might lie in the question of why he was in this game? Why did it matter to him to ace this? He wasn’t in this for the money; his job paid him enough to have a pleasurable life. Initially, he thought that it’s the acceptance by so many people that made him happy, after all, whenever he looked through the likes and the comments, he gushed with happiness. But soon he realized that it was something else, as even when he got nothing but abuses in the comments, he felt delighted. He knew it wasn’t just the numbers, there was something else that spoke to him.

He had never been a person who cared much about numbers. He didn’t care about them when they arrived at the mark sheet, nor when they arrived at the payslip. His salary had increased during the pandemic, but he felt sad at losing the opportunity of hosting his company’s annual function. In school, his favourite moments were the ones in which he was talked about in front of all the students, even if that meant getting punished during the assembly. His parents were both in jobs, and could never make sense of him, as after every few days, he did something outrageous that led to them spending hours with him and made them lose precious time in which they could’ve worked or relaxed.

He got a kick out of being the talked-about person. When his parents were alive, he preferred the days when they talked about him—even if that meant constantly criticizing him—over their usual negligence. He loved the days when his teammates talked about his reels in their daily call. He even prompted those discussions, sometimes at the cost of making fun of himself. It was during one such call that he got the idea that gained him his current popularity. One of his teammates had a patch on his shirt that appeared to be blood but actually was just ketchup. He noticed the appeal of it; the moment he appeared on call, everyone’s attention was pulled to it. People actively expressed their views about it, and in the end, it led to a few good laughs.

He looked through the platform to find content that played with the imagery of blood or something gory, anything that was at least indicative of them. There were loads of movie clips, but for original content, he only found a few that doubled up ketchup as blood and played childish pranks. As he read through the Insta policy, he figured out that because this was a grey region, no one played with it. He knew he had struck gold.

He started the prep without any delay. He looked through dozens of behind-the-scenes and how-to videos of movie prosthetics and stunt designers. He figured out that to replicate a gunshot, all he needed was some fake blood and a device that could double up as a blood squib and push the fake blood out when triggered. He ordered the fake blood from Amazon—and decided to tag Jeff Bezos in the reel where he’ll use it.

For the device, he visited a local store that rented movie-making equipment. The device was a lengthy rubber tube with one end connected to a pressure-controlled inflator, powerful enough to trigger the flow of blood. The other end was thinly covered, so when the inflator released pressure, fake blood tore through the covering. He also bought a fake gun that could create a realistic gunshot sound.

His script was simple. He took the trend that condemned those who liked pineapple on pizza. He walked into a pizza store as a pizza lover and demanded pineapple pizza. The pizza store person denied it and said no real pizza lover would ever ask for it. In response, the pizza lover declared pineapple pizza as the best. And as a result, the store person shot him twice: first for loving this variety and second for declaring it the best.

For the blood flow, he stuck the flowing end of the pipe to his shirt with velcro and held the inflator trigger in one hand. The execution went as expected and the blood spilled with such intensity that a few drops went over the camera lens, giving a raw feel to the video. Since he had shot both the characters separately, there were significant differences in the camera focus and the lighting, and they looked apparent in the final edit. Ideally, he shouldn’t have posted it, but since he had already placed massive effort in preparing it, he posted it and went to sleep. The results exceeded his expectations.

Since he woke up, this was the longest duration for which he kept the phone away from himself. He got back from the kitchen with the coffee and picked the phone.

1.8M views. 16,211 likes. 609 comments.

He skimmed through the comments again and delighted himself with all the praises. He had already touched the 100k follower mark. Everyone on his office call congratulated him, as the reel had crossed 5 million views. He quickly followed it up with a few more similar reels. Within a few days, other accounts were trying to repeat his success. He knew he was a step away from becoming a trendsetter.

And finally came the day that launched him into Insta celebrityhood. In one of the reels, his character got shot at the bum for telling a FRIENDS fan that the series was dumb. This sent the internet into a frenzy. The video was trending on all platforms. Snapshots from the video were placed together to form memes. Buzzfeed and Scoopwhoop published articles about the reel and the latter even called him to get his response.

After this reel, he made a rule to post usual trend related reels every day, and one reel every week based on his trend. While his popularity grew exponentially afterwards, the pace reduced significantly within a few weeks. FRIENDS reel garnered close to 20M views, but none of the reels after that could cross the 3M mark. His follower count also got stagnant at around the 400k mark. Then there were other creators who were getting as better as him at the game. One account with a 5-year-old kid at the helm consistently garnered more views than him. In each reel, he brutally killed his parents for denying something he asked for. Soon the trend reached its saturation and the internet moved on.

He didn’t back down and topped his game by bringing in fake skin. He brought in a makeup person to teach him the craft. He now created fake gorily burnt skin and open wounds on his body. He created slo-mo videos of him getting shot, blood seeping out of his clothes, followed up by fleshed wounds. The reaction to the initial reels wasn’t as great as he expected, but he continued producing them, waiting for the trend to get picked.

The reels remained comparatively low on views and gained divided responses. A section of viewers loved them, and another termed them inappropriate. Insta algorithm identified them as sensitive content and denied him of most young viewers. Accounts emerged that featured his gory reels along with other gory content from movies. A few of his reels and his account got reported several times. Instagram served him multiple notices, asking him to self-monitor his content as it continuously disturbed a group of people. After a few notices, it took down a few of his reels and warned him against suspending his account.

He took the notice very seriously and hid the other gory reels by himself. He got back to making his usual reels and tried to revive his old trend. The views consistently declined, and one day, the number of followers also started to decline. He had touched 425k followers at his peak, which had now reduced to 403k. And while his reels continued to bomb, the section that loved his gory reels, kept commenting on the newer ones, demanding to make more reels like those. With time, even they stopped commenting.

The losing popularity didn’t sit well with him. No one talked about him anymore, not his office folks, not any of the media outlets, not even the haters. He couldn’t make the usual trends. He couldn’t think of anything new. The thought of being stopped from putting out the one unique thing that he had created drew him insane. He was suggested to start a YouTube channel, but he knew it would be of no relief, as YouTube also had similar restrictions.

He often viewed those hidden reels, thinking about what was so problematic about them. He didn’t mind the sensitive tag or the age restriction filter, then why did his reels get reported? There were active accounts that featured a range of gruesome reels—even his reels. There were movies being played in theatres, on OTT platforms, on television that featured more bloodshed than his reels. Teenagers played video games that allowed them to slit throats and shoot people to death. Then why did everyone target his account? He decided to take up the matter with Instagram.

He spent hours writing emails, clarifying his stance. They got back with standard responses. He was prepared to take up the fight, so he got back with references to other accounts that didn’t abide by the policies. There were accounts that posted copyrighted content, influencers who remained a tiny blur away from absolute nudity, videos that made one section laugh at the cost of bullying others, and many other such references. He noticed that some of those accounts got suspended afterwards. But that didn’t matter to him. He needed his right to express himself in the way he wished to.

After not receiving any positive response, he decided to take the matter into his hands. He went live and declared that he will post gory videos regardless of bans by the platform. There were thousands of creators who had similar questions as him and who demanded Insta to either define clear policies or lift them. He received immense support and from them emerged a strong loyal fanbase that treated him as a leader and revolutionary fighting for the freedom of expression. He declared that if his account got blocked, he will create new ones, and asked his fans to support him.

He posted his next reel live and included the name of his next account, as he was sure that this account would be suspended. He also created a blog page that he used to declare his next account’s name. As expected, after garnering over a million views within a few hours, his reel was taken down, and soon, his account was suspended. He continued posting from his second account until that got suspended. Then third, then fourth, and so on. In between, he posted from one of his fan-managed accounts which further pumped his loyal fan base. He soon became the Philosopher’s Stone of Insta world; any account he touched gained a million views.

His fanbase demanded more of him, so he spent hours being live with them. He found ways of making reels more gruesome, posted more frequently, and engaged with as many fan accounts as possible. He couldn’t make time for his work, and when he did, he couldn’t concentrate. His office folks didn’t like talking about his reels anymore as most of them didn’t enjoy what he posted now. He tried getting a response from them, and at times, pushed them into viewing one of his reels during the call. This led to one of them raising a complaint against him to HR.

His online buzz continued for a few weeks until it started to decline. While the loyal fans remained intact, the people who came to see the new spectacle got used to the reels and demanded something new. Some of his fan accounts went a step ahead and posted the most violent videos from the dark web and snatched attention away from him.

What used to be his reason for delight once, now kept him constantly upset. He often vented out at people during live sessions and his fans loved when he did that. His office teammates stopped attending calls with him and the complaints with HR continued to rise. One day, in fury, he abused them the same way he did in his live sessions. HR filed an enquiry against him and suspended him for the next two weeks.

He decided to utilize these two weeks to work uninterruptedly on regaining his buzz. He planned to put up the bloodiest show ever for his fans. He invited people to watch him injure himself with a blade from head to toe. He called the event: #BleedToBeFreed. He spent hours prepping himself with make-up. He brought in a multi-nozzle inflator, attached five tubes at different points of his body, and kept them ready to flush his fake cut marks with fake blood. He knew he had limited time as within 30 minutes of going live with such content, the session will be detected and taken down by the platform.

Fans showered their love as he started the stream. ‘Show me the blood’ became the slogan in comments. He acted as if he was in immense pain. As planned, he triggered the first inflator and screamed at the same moment. The inflator didn’t work, and no blood came out. He pushed it again, and again, but still nothing. He pushed the other triggers but none of them worked. The audience filled the chat with ‘Show me the blood’.

He went to check the inflator in haste but couldn’t identify the problem. As he looked through it, a part of the prosthetic makeup tore off from his face. Before he could control it, another part tore off from his left hand. He picked his phone; the viewers were getting impatient. One of them commented about his fallen makeup in the chat and the number of viewers started to decline. He asked them to wait and ended up breaking the character, which led to further backlash. He felt suffocated as if someone had taped his mouth and pushed him into a dark closet. He saw himself standing in the school assembly, with everyone around, but no one being able to notice him. He struggled to scream and wished for the comments to scream at him.

Unable to make any sense of this, he banged his head against the wall. His head swirled as he screamed with pain. The audience cheered as a few drops of blood made their way down his forehead. Encouraged by the response, and not being able to think of anything else, he picked the blade from the makeup table and made a deep cut on his right cheek. Blood spilled through the cut and his screams echoed the room. The number of viewers increased rampantly. He was being watched by millions of people.

‘Turn it RED! Turn it RED!’ said the comments and he obliged them with another cut through his left hand. The blade dropped from his hand as blood spilled out. The audience watched as he became unconscious and fell to the floor. The news of the event advanced at an insane rate. News channels played it as a Breaking News with blurred images from the feed, while concerned people reached out to the local police to find and stop him from taking his life.

The police reached his place 2 hours later. He had died within the first five minutes of blood loss. His live feed was immediately removed from the platform and the algorithm was updated to locate and delete all the clips from the feed. The internet was flooded with opinions on his death and his past clips were played by channels on loop. Thousands of fan pages emerged every few minutes, reposting clips from his live feed, and speaking about the ultimate sacrifice he made to protect his freedom of expression.

In the next few hours, cases of people injuring themselves on live streams went rampant. Some did it to honour his legacy, some to teach the fascists a lesson, and some to ride the waves of popularity. The celebrities he used to tag now talked about him—a few re-shared the videos where he had tagged them in the past. His fan clubs organized candle marches across cities and the hashtag #BleedToBeFreed trended number one on Twitter.

Thousands gathered outside the hospital where his body was sent for postmortem. They chanted his name and injured themselves. Police baton-charged the crowd but failed to disperse them, as they willingly took the baton to their heads and painted their faces red with the blood. The Home ministry notified an alert across the country and called for an urgent meeting with the state ministries.

The majority didn’t even know his name, they knew him by his online identity: ‘The Bleeding Influencer’. An identity that had taken over everything, even his real name. Hours after his death, he was being discussed by millions across the globe, from streets to the cabinet meetings. Just as he had wanted. Only him.

Notes by Author:

#WTP #influencer #social media