Imagine not being able to look at a nice wall unless you've got some kind of social sway? Well, that was a reality for some folk in Los Angeles last week.
A painted mural is draped in white sheets, hidden from public view. A stern security team stand outside it, hard eyed and waiting for you for prove that you're influential enough to cast your eyes upon it and take selfies with it.
The mural isn't particularly mind-blowing, it's a simple colourful piece consisting of a pink heart with angel wings across it, with the words 'city of angels' hovering above. A Twitter verification tick is also painted above the heart.
Why though?
The mural was created by social media enigmas Like and Subscribe. The brainchild behind this venture is YouTube creator Dillon Francis.
Only those with over 20,000 followers on a social platform were allowed to view and photograph with the mural. That said, the L&S Twitter account only has 11k followers.
Even more ridiculously, L&S had been actively calling influencers out online if they appear to have less than that.
Either way, surmounting public pressure and outrage led Like and Subscribe to remove the protection and allow the peasants to look at the artwork too.
Naturally a street artist has already taken it upon themselves to paint over the mural with their own work as a huge 'f*** you' to the whole idea.
The redesign wasn't done anonymously either. Humans Make Art proudly tagged their brand next to their painting.
a street artist proudly covered up our los angeles themed heart with a different los angeles themed heart pic.twitter.com/nSxFKFxrFW
— Like and Subscribe (@likeandsub) June 30, 2018
The piece looked to be some kind of marketing stunt, seemingly to promote Dillon Francis' new show about influencers. It looks, uh, it looks great. If you like comedy and hitting the dab.
Over the last year Ive been developing my own show called @likeandsub. Its about a topic very very dear to my heart…influencers. Its out July 9th...I am starring in it & also I executive produced it.. A lot of work went into this & i am so excited for you all to finally see it. pic.twitter.com/Y1DtzD6Ril
— Dillon Francis (@DILLONFRANCIS) June 28, 2018
