35 Times People Wanted To Be Popular On Social Media So Bad, They Did Horrible Things For It (New Pics)

Talking to The National (the publisher, not the band), Elaine Wallace, senior lecturer in marketing at the National University of Ireland Galway (so many nationals!), said there's a lot of research showing that people like to receive likes and are motivated to seek them. "People engage in all sorts of practices to get them, and it keeps them coming back," Wallace explained.

But the negative psychological effect of the desire to collect likes has been freely admitted for many years by both Facebook and Instagram. In 2016, Instagram's then chief executive, Kevin Systrom, for example, told The Wall Street Journal: "We need to have a place where you feel free to post whatever you want without the nagging fear of, did someone like that or not?"

Years later, however, there's no such place in sight. People still go above and beyond for internet points, trying to impress folks they don't even know. And when I say beyond, I mean burning fellow plane passengers with a high-powered laser and giving up a child after you learn you can't include them in your videos.

To show how desperate some of us are for temporary online fame, we invite you to take a look at the recent posts we found on the subreddit r/justforsocialmedia. But if you scroll through the list and think that's it, fire up our earlier publication on this community. Sadly, there's way more.