Okay. You sent that voice note at 1:12 a.m. and I am not listening to it a fourth time, so this is the written version. You can scroll back to it when the group chat starts again. I am not your manager. I am the person who watched you almost hand your login to a page with a spinning coin, and I would like that not to happen on a Wednesday before your practical.
You typed free instagram followers the way people type symptoms into a search box, half hoping the first result is a doctor and half hoping it is a miracle. I get it. Your band page has been stuck since the monsoon gig. The poster looks better than the account. You said that yourself, in the canteen, with ketchup on the table and your phone face-up so I had to see the number. Forty-something. Then you laughed like it was a joke. It was not a joke. You checked it again before we stood up.
I am going to be annoying and specific, because the last time I was vague you downloaded two apps and then blamed me for the notifications. So. Start with the account as it exists tonight, not the account in your head. The profile photo is a group shot where you are third from the left and slightly out of focus. The bio says "music is life" which is true and also says nothing a stranger can use. The last post is a rehearsal clip with the caption "soon." Soon was six weeks ago. If I did not already know you, I would assume the page was leftover from someone who graduated.
The print shop, not a strategy
Remember the afternoon we got the fest posters done? The man at the counter had a radio on and a stack of other people's flyers, and he asked if the QR code was the right one because the last student had printed two hundred sheets pointing at a dead link. You checked. It was your page. Then you looked miserable, because the code was correct and the page on the other end was thin. That is the actual problem. Not "the algorithm." A person at a gate, phone in one hand, poster in the other, lands on a grid that goes quiet in August. They do not follow. They walk in.
You wanted the number higher before those posters went up. Fair. I also wanted the number higher, selfishly, because I am on the poster too and I did not want my aunt to open it and think we invented a band in a weekend. What I did not want was the Telegram group you found at midnight, the one where you follow thirty accounts and someone "returns" the follow if the admin is awake. You did it for an hour. I watched the list. Half the accounts were lyrics pages with no face. Two of them messaged you a price list before morning. You said you would ignore them. You did not ignore the first one. You sent me a screenshot and the words "is this normal." No. It is a shop. You walked in by following strangers.
After that you were grumpy with me for being right, which is allowed, and you still needed the poster to land somewhere that did not look abandoned. So we did the boring part in my room with the fan making that ticking noise. We changed the photo to you and the guitar, cropped tight, because the group shot made everyone look like a committee. We rewrote the bio to the gig date, the hall, and the fact that you take requests if someone actually shows up. We pinned the one clip where the chorus is audible. None of that adds a follower by itself. It stops the next person from leaving in two seconds. You argued about the bio for twenty minutes because you wanted a quote from a film. I won. The film quote can live in a story if you are that attached to it.
What you kept clicking anyway
You still went hunting. I know because you forwarded me three links and a voice note that was mostly sighing. One page wanted the password "only to connect." I told you to close it and you said you already had, which I choose to believe. One was a timer. Ten minutes, then the offer changes. You waited nine. The offer did not change into anything except a longer form. The third one was quieter. It asked for the username, showed the photo we had just changed, and did not pretend you were about to become famous before the fest. That is the only tab I did not tell you to kill.
You asked me what to type if you had to search again without me on the phone. I am putting it here so you stop inventing new phrases at 1 a.m. The line you already used, free instagram followers, is enough. You do not need to add "no human verification" or "generator" or the name of a hack. Those extras are how you end up in the Telegram shop. If the page cannot show you your own photo from the public username, it does not know who you are, and I do not know what it thinks it is growing.
When something did move, it was not during the hour you stared. You had class. I texted you at lunch that the number was different and you replied with a single "?" which is your whole personality. We looked at who had arrived while you ate maggi in the corridor. A couple of names were blank. One was a person in another city with a camera and a dog. One watched the rehearsal clip long enough that the view count twitched. You wanted me to say it was a crowd. It was not a crowd. It was less embarrassing than forty. For a fest poster, less embarrassing is the whole job.
The gig, which is the part you forget
Thursday you still wanted to refresh between soundcheck and the actual set. I took the phone and put it in my jacket. You were furious for four minutes and then you had to tune. After the set, three people from the hall followed the page because they had heard the song, not because a website had arranged it. One of them asked for the playlist in the comments. You answered the next day, late, but you answered. That comment is still the best thing on the grid. Do not pin a lyric video over it because you are bored.
You also almost ruined it by going back to the follow-exchange chat "just to top up." I saw the notification on your lock screen while you were buying water. I said no out loud, in the queue, and the man in front of us turned around. Sorry about that. You laughed. You did not open the chat. I am writing this down because future you, at 1:12 a.m., does not remember the queue.
If the number dips next week, do not panic in the group. Some of the blank accounts leave. The person with the dog might stay and never speak to you. The three people from the hall will stay if you post the recording before everyone forgets the night. Post the recording even if the mix is rough. You can apologize for the mix in the caption. People forgive a rough mix. They do not come back for a page that goes silent the moment the gig is over.
Stuff I will not discuss again
I will not sit with you while you install another app that wants your contacts. Your contacts are our classmates and my mother. Leave them out of it. I will not help you write a caption that begs. "Follow for follow, I follow back fast" is how your page starts sounding like the lyric accounts that messaged you. Say the gig. Say the song. Stop there.
One more thing, because you will ask. The practical is on Monday and you keep saying you have no time to "work on the page." You have time to send me voice notes. Use that time once, in the rehearsal room, phone on the amp, one song, no intro where you explain the song. Upload it before you leave the building, while the corridor is still noisy. If you wait until the hostel, you will watch three other bands and then decide yours is not ready, and the poster will keep pointing at a page that ends in August.
I will help you crop a photo and I will tell you if a page is asking for the password, because that one is not a matter of taste. And I will read a caption if you send it before midnight. After midnight I am asleep, and the voice notes can wait. You play better when you are not watching the count between songs. That is the whole email. Pin it. Stop making me repeat it in the chat.
P.S. The film quote can go in a story on Friday if you still care. Not in the bio. The bio has a date and a hall in it now. Leave it alone until the fest is done.