Mic: Buying Instagram shoutouts on Fiverr and the tricky cost of social media clout

Mic: Buying Instagram shoutouts on Fiverr and the tricky cost of social media clout. “‘Check this man out.’ The Instagram Story is beamed to my phone. Sure enough, there is my handle, ‘@Luke_Winkie’ in red-and-yellow neon, hovering in the feed of a meme page with 62,000 followers. The whole transaction took less than a minute. I sent $20 to Michael Macauley’s Fiverr account, and he blessed me with the teeming virality he’s carefully assembled on his Instagram since 2019. This is called a ‘shoutout,’ and Macauley is one of the many vendors on Fiverr selling them. $20 isn’t much, but it represents one of the best ways to alchemize internet clout into hard cash.”