Hire An Instagram Boyfriend: Social Media is Weird Because So Are We

Planning to take a vacation in Rome, but have no boyfriend? Or your partner cannot make it for the trip? Or doesn’t know how to click pictures which will earn you thousands of likes on social media? Fear not, because a tour operator in Rome is offering an Instagram boyfriend, to just follow you around the city and capture you in the picturesque city to your heart’s content. Ladies, why goad your boyfriend or partner to up his photography skills, when you can hire one?

Kill me now. pic.twitter.com/T9tRCbykTv

— Caroline Eden (@edentravels) January 22, 2019

SOME TAKEAWAYS

• A tour operator in is offering Instagram boyfriends, which you can hire for 350 euros for three hours.
• The ad is an unwitting commentary on the times we live in. 
• People want to flaunt everything from travel and food, to love and achievements on social media.
• In fact, is your life, even a life, if you don’t put it on a virtual display?

Imagine a boyfriend who won’t get irritated with repeated requests to take a picture.

Only those who are on Instagram know what a perfect picture is worth. Now imagine a boyfriend who won’t get irritated with repeated requests to take a picture or patiently follow all of your million instructions, to keep clicking you in one pose, till you are happy with the results. Sadly, not everybody knows the worth of perfect Instagrammable pictures, which one can proudly use with #travelvibes or #wanderlust. People like me, whom almighty has neither blessed with a face to flaunt, nor willingness to at least try, could care less what all the fuss is all about. But as a social media addict friend once put it, "It only matters if you've put it on Insta."

Which is why your travel to Rome won't be off your bucket list, unless you upload thousands of perfect pictures online. However, you need a professional photographer at your disposal, to ensure that every click is worth the money you've spent on this trip. But saying that this is just a photographer who’ll follow you around Rome doesn’t have any charm. Add to that the fact that he’ll cost you 350 euros for three hours. Thus, the rental photographer has been repackaged and is being sold to those who’ll hire him, as an Instagram boyfriend.

Is your life, even a life, if you don’t put it on a virtual display?

The ad is an unwitting commentary on the times we live in. People want to flaunt everything from travel and food, to love and achievements on social media. In fact, is your life even a life, if you don’t put it on a virtual display? The advertisement boldly uses the phrase, “If your own significant other doesn’t cut it.” One wonders what advertisers mean by that. That your boyfriend fails to take good pictures? Or is reluctant to engage in your social media whims. But it emulates how clicking pictures is a big part of relationships these days.

Bad photography skills could cost you a potential relationship today. But we are increasingly reducing precious moments in life, including those we make on travels far and wide, to clicking pictures. Is that all that is to a relationship, to click pictures from pre-approved angles on a trip? Is there nothing more to travelling the world, than capturing it in your camera? Some of the best memories of your journeys are the ones that you aren't able to document. You can write about them, or talk about them or think about them endlessly, and they'll give you an experience no rental boyfriend or no filter can ever give.

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Yamini Pustake Bhalerao is a writer with the SheThePeople team, in the Opinions section. The views expressed are the author’s own.