Billie Eilish just added 111 million peeps as her closest friends on Instagram

Billie Eilish has just thrown a BS best-friends stunt on Instagram, making around 111 million fooled people feel they are truly ‘close’ to her.

For those unfamiliar with how Instagram Story posts work, users can post an image or video to their story, and anybody who would ordinarily have access to it would be able to see it. Then there’s the “close friends” feature, where users can add other users to a list, and people on that list will be able to see stories that are set to only be viewable by the limited accounts on that special list.

Eilish shared a story yesterday with her “close friends” but it appears all of Eilish’s 110 million-plus followers were automatically added to the list.

Not long after Eilish shared the post (a simple lo-fi photo of her hand under water), she began trending on X. The posts beneath became mainly jokes about how joyous or triumphant it feels to be one of Eilish’s “close friends” and, thankfully, the great pacifier of irony prevailed.

Billie’s followers were quickly forced to confront the fact that there was nothing personal about it at all; in fact, it was all a ploy to market her next album.

So far as marketing techniques go, the move was genius and I’m sure there’ll be other pop stars ready to mess with fans until we all start getting used to it for what it is: blatant public relations on an oversaturated internet.

Michael Mastess