If upon your Instagram perusing adventures, you happen to come across stories populated with adorable pet pictures captioned with the sticker “we’ll plant 1 tree for every pet picture” you’d be forgiven for being slightly confused.
Who’s behind it? Are they really going to be able to plant that amount of trees? And how would a pet picture exist as compensation for a forest?
Regardless of the questions surrounding the post, people flooded Instagram with pet photos from all over the world anyway, in a mysterious social media environmentalist campaign that boomed through the internet.
Boomed? Yes. The post garnered over 4 million shares. Which would mean 4 million trees. Now the curious reader might wonder in practicality, who is going to plant 4 million trees?
Speculations began to arise as speculations do, as the internet began to look for the ‘anonymous’ Lorax speaking for the trees. Was it Musk? An NGO? Someone’s hippie grandma who may not have known the power of internet activism? Some people seriously believed that it was one man – India-based video creator dubbed Tech Muster. Tech Muster had posted a video yesterday showing users how to find the “Add Yours” sticker to their Instagram accounts as ABC reports, and since the post-a-pet-plant-a-tree campaign was based on the “Add Yours feature, conclusions started to be drawn.
However, Naveen was not the man behind the trees, but faced public inquisition regardless, including:
‘Show me the area where you are planting all these trees,’ or, ‘Who is giving you the funding to plant so many trees?”.
If it wasn’t Naveen, then who?
Recently, the real proponents behind the campaign came forth.
In a statement dubbed “Who’s behind the anonymous tree planting post”, Instagram account @plantatreeco expressed what happened, and why they were so difficult to find.
“We [plantatreeco] actually posted it … but only for 10 minutes,” they began.
“We immediately understood the potential this post had and believed we didn’t have the capabilities and resources to keep our end of the post. So we deleted it. Though we deleted the post, it continued to spread through people’s stories and through the power of the internet is now at over 4 million shares,” the page continued.
Further, the page noted that Instagram allegedly nulled their credit – which is why they were so difficult to find as the source of the campaign.
“Instagram has also stripped us from the credit of making the post, hiding the originator of the post from the millions of people who have participated.
“Though we don’t have the ability to plant 4 million trees, we can use this awareness to make a lasting impact, which is why we started this fundraiser,” they add.
The page also encouraged that, since awareness has now been powerfully raised – people should repost their latest post (as seen below) which provides a link to the fundraising campaign.
View this post on Instagram
‘With your help, we can actually plant 4 million trees,” they concluded before checking in with Instagram saying: “Also, tell @instagram to give us credit,”
Currently, donations sit at R20, 943,02 of which R15, 166, 210.98 is needed for all the trees.
You can make a donation to the campaign through their page:
Why did this campaign blow up the way it did?
Now that the goose in this wild goose chase has come forth, you might wonder why this trend took the world by storm as it did when there are so many campaigns of this nature that we see daily without quite the same magnitude of impact.
1. Pet pictures are the bread and butter of Instagram.
A pet picture as a currency for helping the environment, something millions of people are already rightly concerned with, is a recipe for success.
2. It plays on lazy activism
As advertising expert Philip Boatswain notes, “people care about the environment and it hasn’t cost them anything to ‘help’ with the environment here.”
“It’s just posting a picture of their animals, which they were probably going to do anyway.”
‘Lazy activism’ ties in with wanting to help the world through various areas of concern, like the environment, but without a want to pursue actions that take a lot of effort.
3. Instagram’s latest feature makes it easy for photo trends to go viral
The ‘Add Yours’ sticker feature is likely going to be an easier version of a hashtag, writes Cape {town} Etc’s Ashleigh Nefdt. Hashtags help us locate posts, ideas and pictures talking about the same topic. They’re like a door to a room filled with different ideas. Now, with the ‘Add Yours’ sticker, the essence of a hashtag comes into play except with photos. i.e: I post the sticker with a written prompt, like post-a-pet-plant-a-tree, and others can add their pictures. The sticker becomes the ‘door’ to the room of pictures. You click on the sticker and become able to see the people you are following, who have acted on the sticker’s request and posted their pet pictures. Of course, this feature will manifest into a myriad of different topics, but it’s actually only been active for less than a week. If anything, we’re able to see how great the power of peer pressure (even if it’s for a good cause) really is.