More Twitter Followers Can Help You Get Work, but is It Worth It to Buy Fake Ones?

Twitter can feel like high school. You’re always trying to make everyone like you, but in the end you’re probably not going to be the most popular kid in school. Regardless of how many clever puns you can brainstorm, you probably have less of an audience than you would like.

Fortunately, the Twitter side of this analogy has a solution. No, your panacea does not involve writing in your name on all the prom court ballots, but it is as questionable. If you really want more followers on Twitter, there’s an easy fix: buy them. Plenty of websites will take your money and turn it into a fake crowd of Twitter friends. While doing so is perfectly legal, the moral implications of this decision are still complicated.

Does falsely inflating your social media presence give you the extra credibility you need to get work? Or will bots betray you and lead to a bad reputation? Let’s check out the pros and cons of buying a Twitter army:

Pros:

Your Klout score will go up.

Klout measures someone’s digital influence by accumulating all activity across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and, surprise, Twitter. If you have more followers on Twitter, your Klout score increases. You may think this score is just a vanity metric—until I tell you a larger Klout score means your name comes up higher in Bing search results. According to TechCrunch writer Anthony Ha, the search results will also bring up “your public LinkedIn profile, links to the other social network accounts that you’ve connected to Klout, your most influential recent moments on Twitter and Instagram, topics on which you’re influential, and of course your Klout score.”

You’ll get more real followers.

In a piece for the LA Times, Gilad Notan found his number of real followers increased when he purchased bot followers. This spike in audience likely stemmed from the fact that his Twitter account seemed more legitimate.

You’ll look awesome to employers.

Who would you rather hire: a freelancer with 100 followers or 10,000 followers? Sure, your newfound Internet status might be a facade, but most people probably won’t take the time to make sure your followers are all a bunch of T-1000s. Creating a (fake) name for yourself on Twitter will give you a (fake) influential web presence, which could lead to work opportunities.

Everyone is doing it.

Buying fake followers is more common than you might think. Ever heard of Barack Obama? Turns out, the President has more than 19.5 million faux friends on Twitter. He also has a near-impossible Klout score of 99. Needless to say, he went for a long time without people questioning his virtual prowess. Only 20 percent of his followers are active users on the site!

Cons:

Fake followers skew your true social media ROI.

It will be extremely hard to measure how potent your content is when you inflate your Internet status. Sure, you have 100,000 followers, but only 10 of them favorited the link to your last article.

You can get busted.

If people really care, they can check the legitimacy of your online audience. Sites like Fake Follower Check reveal how many bot followers people have in your network. Even without a tool, it’s pretty easy to look at a list of followers and see they’re a bunch of people who have never tweeted, with truly bizarre bios that seem pulled from random snippets of text online.

Your reputation can take a dive.

Worst case scenario, paying for friends can tarnish your reputation among colleagues and potential employers. Sure, it might not be as big news as a celebrity lying about her popularity, but people still will be less likely to take you seriously.

What to do?

In the end, the moral quandary over buying Twitter followers all comes down to the high school analogy. Being popular can be fun, if you earn it and don’t say things are “fetch.” Staying true to yourself can be worthwhile, as long as you aren’t lonely for companions and excited about math team varsity jackets. There’s probably a sweet spot between the two extremes. You might not win prom court, but you can still have an impressive social circle.

Image via Mean Girl Wiki