If your Instagram profile is awash with sandwiches and sepia-toned sunsets, you may need a little help upping your social media persona. Enter Instasham, a free, online hub of fake Instagram photos that visitors can steal and claim as their own.
The brainchild of Brooklyn-based artists Andy Dao and Stacey Smith, Instasham is a media arts project and social experiment. With a tagline: "If you can't make it, fake it", the site allows users to live a life filled with tropical island getaways, sports cars and beautiful people, albeit a fake one.
Instagram, the photo-sharing service on which this spoof site is based, has experienced remarkable success, gaining over 100 million active users in the two-and-a-half years since its launch. "Digital photography and social media have amplified our ability to share our lives with the rest of the world," Instasham's About page reads. "We are a society that brags through megapixels. It is in this insight that we saw an opportunity, and Instasham was created."
Users need simply select an image, take a photo of that image with their phones, and then upload it to Instagram. Images are broken down into nine categories, some of which include Beach, Globe Trotter and On a Living Spree, complete with images of Jay Z and Kanye West.
Speaking to Digital Journal, Clay Darrohn, CEO of Internet marketing firm fishbat, described Instasham as an opportunity for photo-sharing fans to build their own "Matrix-like" social media profiles. "Since the emergence of Instagram, picture sharing has exploded on social networks," said Darrohn, warning that while the concept may be fun, there are limitations.
"Social media profiles are an extension of our personal selves that we can manufacture and groom to our liking. A platform like Instasham allows the average Instagram user to appear better and more successful - but let there be a reminder that social profiles are not the user but just a reflection of the user and nothing more."
A disclaimer at the bottom of the Home page is for those who are concerned that their real photos may be "borrowed" by the Instasham team. "All of these photos have been sourced from the internets [sic]," it reads. "If you find that we have used one of yours and rather we not, please don't cease and desist us, bro. Kindly shoot us an e-mail and we'll happily take it down."
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