Can unknowns become instant Instagram influencers?

New HBO documentary tracks trio’s online rise by using an army of bots

How easily can someone — anyone — become Instafamous?

That’s the question journalist Nick Bilton attempts to answer in the HBO documentary “Fake Famous,” which debuted Tuesday on HBO and Crave.

Bilton, a tech reporter and correspondent for Vanity Fair, put out a casting call with one simple question: Do you want to be famous?

“We immediately got around 5,000 responses,” he said. (Surely it doesn’t hurt that he was searching in L.A.)

Bilton’s goal was “to show that anyone could do this, essentially,” and he looked for people with fewer than 1,000 followers: an unknown by IG standards.

He selected a trio of Los Angelenos and magnified their Instagram presence by purchasing bots (manufactured online personas) as followers, along with comments and likes. Bilton also helped them manufacture a facade of the life that many aspire to.

From June 2019 to September 2020, Bilton and cameras followed his subjects — aspirational fashion designer Chris Bailey, struggling actress Dominique Druckman and frustrated personal assistant Wylie Heiner — as their online profiles rose.

The subjects have varying reactions to their social-media ascension. One embraces newfound fame, reaping the benefits of free products and brand partnerships; another resents the fabricated following, longing to be more authentic; and a third begins to suffer emotionally when a follower grows suspicious of their sudden popularity.

“We really didn’t know what the beginning, middle and end was going to be,” Bilton says. “We just went along with it and just saw as it was happening.

“The huge realization I had during the film — beyond just the number of fake followers and fake bots and all this stuff — was how bad the influencer culture makes you feel,” he added. “I stopped using Instagram for a couple of years … I remember there was a point where I was pretty depressed and feeling dull, and I didn’t realize why. And my wife helped me realize I was looking at these social media accounts with these influencers who are going on all these amazing trips and I was feeling bad, ’cause I was like, ‘Wait I’m just home. I’m just working all the time. I’m not doing what they’re doing.’ ”

Bilton said there’s “a good side and a bad side” to people becoming influencers.

“The good side is Black Lives Matter, Iranian revolution, #MeToo movement. The bad side is a bunch of crazy MAGA people storming the Capitol, influencer culture making you feel terrible, the rise of suicide, teen depression. And I don’t know how you separate those.

“I don’t know if the platforms have a responsibility, or the people on the platforms have a responsibility to rectify this, but it’s not the people who want to be influencers who are bad; it’s the platform that is enabling it … they hold most of the responsibility here.”