5 November 2015 - Social media star deletes Instagram account
Activer le mode zenSocial media star Essena O’Neill deletes Instagram account
Jessica Elgot (The Guardian)
A teenager who dramatically altered her popular Instagram profile to reveal how she was paid for seemingly perfect images has deleted her account, encouraging followers to visit and donate to her new website instead.
Essena O’Neill, 18, who had 612,000 followers, had rewritten the captions on many of the images, explaining she was being paid to promote clothes and drinks, and had taken some of the selfies more than 100 times to get the right stomach-sucked-in shot. O’Neill said the pictures “served no real purpose other than self-promotion”.
The Australian teen has started her own site, letsbegamechangers.com, to promote “veganism, plant-based nutrition, environmental awareness, social issues, gender equality, [and] controversial art”.
It features a button that users can press to donate to O’Neill’s new venture. In one tearful video posted on the site, the teenager admitted she had been struggling to make ends meet.
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"Social Media is not Real Life"
Jonah Bromwich (The New York Times)
Changing her Instagram name to “Social Media Is Not Real Life,” Ms. O’Neill has denounced the artificiality of social media, recaptioning many of her old pictures on the site to reveal the painstaking work that went into creating what seemed to be spontaneous moments. It was akin to Beyoncé admitting that she did not, in fact, wake up like this.
In one of the pictures, showing Ms. O’Neill in a bikini, the caption has been rewritten to explain that the photo was taken and retaken over a hundred times. In a smiling selfie, the new caption ends with a disclaimer all in upper case: “There is nothing real about this.”
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O'Neill's intentions
Essena O'Neill: Teenage awakening or genius marketing?
Gillian Orr (The Independent)
With an Instagram feed filled with bikini selfies, beautiful beaches and, of course, smashed avocados, Essena O'Neill is just one of the thousands of users of the social media platform who peddles a sun-soaked aspirational life. And with over 600,000 followers she is certainly one of its most successful. Rewarded financially for her Valencia-filtered existence, O'Neill could command up to 1,000 Australian dollars (£465) for endorsing a product in one of her posts. She also boasts 200,000 followers on YouTube and Tumblr and 60,000 on Snapchat. Not bad for a schoolgirl from Queensland.
But now the 18-year-old Australian has had a crisis of conscience. Uploading a tearful 17‑minute video to YouTube, O'Neil has sworn off social media, calling it “contrived perfection made to get attention” and saying she had spent the last few years “living in a screen wishing people would value [her]”.
Quitting all platforms except for Instagram, O'Neill has deleted over 2,000 of her pictures on the site and has edited the captions on the remaining ones to give a more realistic portrayal of her so-called fabulous life.
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The Business of Instagram
Hayley C. Cuccinello (Forbes)
Australian Instagram sensation, Essena O’Neill, announced last week that she is quitting social media. O’Neill, who turns nineteen today, gained a substantial audience through her carefully curated lifestyle photos. Her enviable following is estimated at 5,700 followers on Instagram, 250,000 on Youtube and Tumblr, and 60,000 average views on Snapchat
But O’Neill has decided to leave behind the platforms that brought her money and fame in favor of living more authentically. She explains her choice on her new site, LetsBeGameChangers.com:
"I didn’t live in the real world, I lived through screens. And I created a celebrity construct of myself, believing it would bring me happiness. That couldn’t be further away from the truth… I no longer want to spend hours and hours of my time scrolling, viewing and comparing myself to others."
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"5 November 2015 - Social media star deletes Instagram account", La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), mai 2015. Consulté le 23/04/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2015/5-november-2015-social-media-star-deletes-instagram-account