I’ve noticed something rather peculiar on Instagram lately.

In a sea of acai bowls, red carpets and selfies, there’s a trend celebrities have adopted to get their famous mitts on free stuff.

“I’m moving house!” a model/lifestyle blogger/obscure reality TV show contestant from 2012 will post. “But I don’t know any good homeware brands! Please tag your favourites so I can check them out.”

LISTEN: The case for realistic images on Instagram. (Post continues…)

Sound familiar? If not, just replace “homeware” with clothes/jewellery/makeup and BOOM, I can guarantee posts just like the one above are dotted all over your feed.

At first, I didn’t think much of them.

“Maybe she just doesn’t know about Kmart or Target yet,” I’d tell myself like a total ignoramus. “Maybe Google isn’t something she knows about, either. I don’t know… who am I to judge?”

But then I noticed the celebrities would always (very specifically) ask their fans to tag the brand, over merely writing the name in the comments section.

Why? Because, my fellow muggle, they're not wanting you to just recommend a product or service. Oh, no!

They want you to notify a brand that, hey, here is a person with thousands of followers, and a fair bit of influence! If you just give them that lovely tan futon for free, or a bunch of faux fur jackets in size 10, your brand will be plastered all over their social media profile.

Basically, celebrities are doing call outs for free stuff, and they're using you to get it. Meaning THEY'VE KNOWN ABOUT BLOODY KMART ALL ALONG.

Dun dun dunnnnn.

Okay, I must admit: it's super savvy, but once you cotton on to what's happening, it's pretty god damn annoying too.

Instagram celebrities are kind of... geniuses. And if you tag a brand on their posts, I hate to break it to you, you're nothing but a pawn in their mastermind game.