Swipe through your Instagram story feed now and you will notice anyone with a cat, dog, rabbit or fish is posting a photo of their pet with the caption “We’ll plant one tree for every pet picture”.
Key points:
- The original source of the pledge cannot be found, meaning it is likely the idea was abandoned and no trees will be planted
- More than three million people have shared a photo of their pet as part of the campaign
- One user mistaken for being involved in creating the trend says he’s been inundated with questions from around the world
Who “we” refers to is not specified — and there is apparently no information anywhere on the internet about any organisation pledging to plant trees in return for pet photos.
The closest lead comes from an Instagram video creator called Tech Muster, who posted a video yesterday showing users how to find the “Add Yours” sticker to their accounts.
Since then, the India-based Tech Muster – whose name is Naveen – has been inundated with questions about how he intends to plant more than three million trees.
“I’m messaging people to tell them I’m not behind it and it was started by an organisation, but they later deleted the post so we can’t find out who started the trend,” he said.
‘Impossible’ to find the original source
Yesterday, the number of people who had added their own pet photos to the chain exceeded 571,000 and today it has grown to over 3.3m.
That means whoever is behind the campaign will need to visit the nursery for millions seedlings and source a very large parcel of land.
But finding them will present an impossible challenge, according to Phillip Boatswain, the owner of Wollongong advertising agency Piccolo Media.
“How can you narrow it down to one person starting something when you look at the numbers of how many people have shared it?” he said.
A match made in social media heaven
Along with photos of acai bowls and sunrises, pet snaps are the lifeblood of Instagram.
To match that with the potential for someone to help the environment by not parting with a single dollar or leaving their couch is a recipe for viral success.
“People care about the environment and it hasn’t cost them anything to ‘help’ with the environment here,” Mr Boatswain said.
“It’s just posting a picture of their animals, which they were probably going to do anyway.
Trend sparked by new feature
If the idea of tagging your photo to an existing stream of photos seems new to Australian Instagram users, it is because it was only introduced five days ago.
The Add Yours function on Instagram is a new addition to the social media platform.
It allows users to add their own content to an existing chain of photos on a specific topic, such as “A recent photo you took”.
Users get notified when their friends have contributed to an Add Yours sticker they have created.