The blue tick

Instagram´s verified badge…

If you´re an Instagram user, you´ll know very well that it´s something most people longed for.

It gave you status.

You were verified as an “important” or “relevant” personality among the vast ocean of anonymous users.

I won´t lie to you, in my case it was something I desired.

Simply because I thought it would be more beneficial to my image as a relevant artist. And also, I probably wouldn´t get so many copyright infringements from the algorithm who for some reason often thought that I was using copyrighted material from others (which I wasn´t).

Turns out I recently got a verified badge after releasing the first-ever bandoneon album in Warner Classics.

And now I couldn´t care less.

Especially after Instagram has made blue badges available to anyone who will pay for them, something that in my view automatically decreases the value of the whole blue badge thing.

More than ever, I´m seeing people with a blue badge who comment on my posts and even ask me to follow them back (a very unsexy practice if you ask me), while having barely any followers (sometimes not even a couple dozen) and certainly no relevance whatsoever in any field.

I´m not making a value judgment on those or any people. Mainly because I don´t know them.

But, I do judge INstagram´s decision of making this feature available to anyone since it just takes some money, rather than actual relevance or skill, to appear as someone important.

And what the heck does it mean to be important anyways? There are many ways of being important, or irrelevant.

Anyways, I haven´t got any copyright infringements since then though.

My Bach album is close to getting 100,000 streams on Spotify alone. You can listen to it here: Bach on Bandoneon.

Have a great day!

Claudio.