He told her they could “make millions the first year”.
Essena O’Neill, the Instagram star who publicly quit the social media platform last week, has released a new video calling out fake online relationships.
In the clip called ‘Love Gets Likes’ uploaded to Vimeo, O’Neill described the moment a “famous supermodel” pursued her for a relationship, only to reveal that it was a “business proposal”.
O’Neill explained he justified his offer as there were “other couples who had been doing it” and they’d “both bump up our followers”.
The clip of Essena O’Neill describing the fake relationship she was pursued for (post continues after video):
In the 6 minute video O’Neill shows a number of ‘selfies’ she sent to the supermodel, explaining how he had asked her for them and just how contrived they were at the time.
She explains how after he revealed his business plan, she felt “this person was only pursuing me because I had a heap of followers, I had a somewhat carefree personality online and what I looked beautiful in pictures?
“It was not me.”
O’Neill publicly announced she was quitting her account on Tuesday last week saying, “Social media is not real.”
The Instagram user who had over half a million followers posted videos explaining her decision, then re-edited captions of a select number of photos to highlight how manufactured they were.
She has since deleted her Instagram account entirely and removed some of the videos.
Although she remains off Instagram, O’Neill continues to upload videos and contribute to her website Let’s Be Game Changers.
Top Comments
This girl's complete lack of self awareness is actually utterly hilarious. She ditched vapid, vacuous social media to focus on 'real issues' and thus far has filmed a dozen videos which focus on nothing other than herself. The 'I' and 'me' count in her videos is OFF the charts. It's extraordinary.
Could she have spent any longer getting to the point? You have to wait four minutes, watching selfies of her and listening to her ramble about how great her social media career was and how she was overseas having a great time with friends and being pursued by a famous supermodel, until she finally starts talking about how it was fake. Why the long humblebrag when she could have just said, "This supermodel asked me to be in a relationship for business purposes. It was fake. Here's why that was a bad thing." And why the constant replay of the "styled" selfies? What happened to her showing her make-up free face? Did she need to remind us how she looks with make-up on now that she's deleted her Instagram account?