Have you ever just wanted to delete your social media, forge a new identity, start over and travel the world?
Yeah, us too. Maybe that was the reasoning behind JetBlue’s newest contest, which asks people to give up that which they hold most dear: Their Instagram photos. In exchange, three lucky winners will win a year of free JetBlue flights.
There are a few other hoops budding travel influencers need to jump through, as well: After you delete all of your Instagram photos, thereby stripping yourself of all vestiges of the person you once were, you then need to upload a special JetBlue-branded image, and tag it with #AllYouCanJetSweepstakes.
Then your entry is complete. The old you is dead. You are only JetBlue now.
If the idea of deleting your Instagram photos in a long-shot attempt to win not-entirely-free travel (winners are still responsible for taxes and fees) is too much to bear, fear not: JetBlue makes it clear you can just archive your old photos, so when you don’t win you can re-post them and the old you shall emerge phoenix-like from the pixels. And if you do win, JetBlue of course wants you to fill up your Insta tabula rasa with bomb travel pics.
The question is, why does JetBlue want you to delete your Instagram pics? The idea seems to pit two complementary forces against each other: The desire for unfettered world travel, and the desire to obsessively document it in all its filtered, color-saturated glory. Is it a commentary on our over-reliance on social media as an identity-building tool? If you’ll recall, Fyre Festival drummed up publicity by asking influencers to change their profile to an orange square. Did JetBlue look at what happened to Fyre Festival and say, “Yes, we definitely want to implicitly align ourselves with that result”?
Also, not to put ideas in anyone’s head, but theoretically, couldn’t you just start a new, blank Instagram account and use that to enter? There’s nothing in the rules that seems to indicate otherwise. CNN has reached out to JetBlue for comment.
https://myfox8.com/2019/03/05/jetblue-wants-you-to-delete-your-instagram-photos-for-free-flights/
