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kleinbl00  ·  2130 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Instagram’s Wannabe-Stars Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy

    "Loser twenty-somethings who are addicted to social media are harassing luxury hotels because other loser twenty-somethings are lying about getting to stay there for free"

I would read the shit out of that. Let's be honest, it's a Funny-Or-Die webseries waiting to happen. You could call it "influencers" but that shit's already taken.

Celebrity branding goes back to Josiah Wedgewood and the Queen. What's funny to me is that credulous sources like The Atlantic assume there's no calculus there. "How much does a hotel room cost me? How much will I recoup that expense if I give it away?" If you've got an empty room that otherwise goes fallow and your expenses are limited to the half man-hour it's costing you to clean it, you're looking at like a $10-$20 local equivalent cost so the barrier to entry is low - does some resort in Phuket make $10 from some Instagram influencer taking their picture at your hotel?

Not if your hotel's name isn't listed anywhere on any of their selfies, it doesn't, like pretty much every shot The Atlantic used in their article.