What a view | Followers on Netflix provides a warning of the fickle Instagram fame game
In the Tokyo-set series, social media makes a star of its protagonists but fails to fill the voids created by the superficiality of it all
It’s a numbers game. Everybody knows the true value of a person can be gauged by the number of social media followers they have: no followers, nobody.
Such a reality can be particularly harsh in a place like Tokyo, which is powered by mobile phones. Those in the Japanese capital’s modelling and entertainment industries, needing acolytes more than most, suffer greatly from a lack of friends.
So when you are a bit-part actress and stand-in model keeping the studio warm for the stars, and your friends tell you, “we’re living in an age when your value is quantified,” you should hang on tightly to the day job (even if it is delivering food by bicycle).
However, deceptively meek country girl Natsume Hyakuta (Elaiza Ikeda) won’t be deterred, despite giving the impression that ripped jeans will forever be the haute of her haute couture. And hey presto, Natsume is magically transformed into Cinderella, suddenly attending the fanciest VIP functions at the stroke of an Instagram benediction bestowed by fashion photographer and society page darling Limi Nara (Miki Nakatani). Instagram, instant fame.
Today that’s all the talent you need. This is the message Followers (Netflix, series one now streaming) only seems to be imparting, as there’s more to the story than the idea that if you are not trending you are ending; and the entwined lives of these two women – one desperate for recognition but frightened by the thought of it, the other desperate for a partner and a baby – make a ready vehicle for the telling.
Seeing through the superficiality of it all, each recognises that while “social media is the gateway to the world” and amassing followers a power trip, its intrusiveness and pressures threaten to overwhelm their essentially decent characters.