Journalist Hired a 23-Year-Old to Watch Her Friends' Instagram Stories for a Week
ZeroStateReflex · x · 2026-09-15
Tech journalist Taylor Lorenz hired a 23-year-old as her "24/7 Instagram Content Consumer" for a week: watching every friend's Story, liking posts, and keeping up with weddings, moves, job announcements and baby pics — thousands of updates in total.
The column argues that Story views have become "relationship currency" on Instagram: being seen signals you care. Interviewees like WaPo style editor Lindsey Underwood describe feeling slighted when close friends don't watch. Lorenz uses the experiment to ask what happens to social meaning when engagement is automated — a pointed metaphor for the credibility of engagement metrics in the creator marketing economy.
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