The perfect case study of the implications of Close Friends subscriptions is
Caroline Calloway. Calloway, the influencer famous for extremely long captions about her improbably charmed and romantic life (and more recently for a prolonged and
confusing debate about whether she’s a scammer or just a mess),
started offering her 797,000 followers the option of exclusive paid access to her Close Friends list in August.
Followers who paid $2 a month would become Close Friends, in the Instagram definition of the word, and those who paid $100 a month would become Closest Friends—meaning they would also get a one-hour monthly Skype call. (Calloway offered only 20 spots in the latter group because “there are only so many hours in a month.”) She currently has 342 Close Friends, and her Patreon page promises that when she hits 400 she’ll do an exclusive “orchid hair tutorial.”