Yet about four months and 70 Instagram posts later, @cookingwithfatmax is far from stardom. Despite how cute Max looked or how plump my steamed pork buns appeared, the account stagnated at roughly 300 followers. I bought 2,500 bot followers and waited for the likes to pour in and the audience to swell. His number of followers hemorrhaged, presumably because Instagram purged many of the phony accounts. The average number of likes on the posts dipped to about 45.

Source: New York Times December 05, 2018 16:23 UTC