Love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny that, among smartphones, the iPhone is the ultimate status symbol in Indonesia. So much so that people are willing to buy screenshots taken from the Apple device.
Out of Indonesian TikTok emerged a trend in which sellers are promoting iPhone screenshots to those who don’t own the device. In most cases, these buyers would buy the distinctly iPhone screenshots — showing customized chats or social media feeds — to post on their socials as if they snapped the images on their own iPhones.
In our dive into the trend, we also found services in which the customer provides the seller with their social media login details in order to give their feeds the iPhone treatment. For example, one may do this to obtain the “Twitter for iPhone” tag on their tweets, which is exclusive to iOS devices.
While we tracked these services being offered all the way back to last year, the trend has boomed in popularity this week thanks to TikTok. Sellers have been popping up by the numbers on Twitter, and, more recently, on online marketplaces.
A screenshot generally costs in the range of IDR500-1,000 (US$0.03-0.06), with most sellers accepting payment via local e-payment platforms.
The world we live in, eh?
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