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Over the weekend, you might not have heard it—the sound it made was like a collection of ribbons falling to the ground on top of one another, or like the gasp of a teenager in the face of an unexpected text—but a new ruler of the Insta-world was coronated. Selena Gomez became the most followed person on Instagram, surpassing her best friend, Taylor Swift. As of the very moment of this posting, Gomez is followed by 69.7 million people, which is more than the entire population of France.
Now, Selena Gomez is not the most famous person on the planet. She is not even the most famous person with an Instagram account (that would be Beyoncé, or Swift, or Kim Kardashian). Most people know her as either the ex-girlfriend of Justin Bieber, or the girl who was on that Disney show about witches, or as a pop star whose songs are always playing in their spin class. She comes across as perfectly appealing in interviews, and has been famous for nearly a decade now, and has carved out a very successful career for herself. But none of this quite explains why she would be the most followed person on arguably the most popular social network.
We have some theories, though, as to how Gomez rose to the top.
She doesn’t post that often. This might seem like a minor point, but we think it actually makes a significant difference when it comes to one’s decision to follow a celebrity (we can think of a whole range of celebrities we’ve considered following only to learn, upon brief perusal, that they post anywhere from 12 to 89 photos the morning after any given event they attend). Gomez has posted a total of 1,131 photos on her account, which is about a fourth of the number the seventh-most-followed Kylie Jenner has put up, and half as many as fourth-most-followed Ariana Grande (Swift has only posted 857 times—which indicates there is perhaps a lesson to be learned here for the non-Gomez-and-Swift celebrities.) Also, not to sound like a fifth-grade math teacher, but if you post fewer Instagrams, each individual one becomes more of an “event,” of course, which also benefits Gomez. There’s a certain “specialness” when she posts a shot that other celebrities, who post much more frequently, aren’t quite able to achieve.
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