I Spent $10 to Share A Moss Video to 102,500 Strangers Online
The Surprising Joy in Advertising Random, Simple Things
At a random point in 2019, I was mindlessly viewing Instagram stories on my feed, tapping to skip all ads, when a weird ad popped into view.
It was the photo of someone gently holding a perfectly smooth, plain white mantou (Chinese steamed bun).
I was intrigued. I tapped again and the second photo of the ad showed up — same camera angle, same hand, a similar mantou, at a completely different place. There were zero price tags, zero slogans for the pure, smooth mantou in the middle of the frame.
I immediately clicked to see the account that shared the photos on a sponsored story. 12 mantous of various shapes and sizes tenderly held by the same hand greeted me. The description of the account says, “I go out every day to buy ten mantous and give them to my little cousin as dinner.”
