Are we jumping on a 'flex culture' where nothing is our own to show off?

Imagine scrolling through Instagram and seeing someone you follow vibing front row at a Taylor Swift concert, sipping lattes at an aesthetic Seoul café, or casually soft-launching their relationship at a candle-lit rooftop bistro.

Only, none of it actually happened.

Welcome to a growing underground phenomenon that lets users buy the illusion of luxury, adventure, and social status.

How so?

These pages give you options of choosing between fake girl or boy accounts as per your preference, and these profiles share stories with your preference of an experience. You can then share the same on your stories, once tagged, and it seems as though you were out with a friend or partner at a fancy restaurant, concert, or soft launching your guy.

This isn’t your average editing service. This is all polished and sent to your inbox for a small fee, that you can pay online.

Digital cool is cheaper than reality

This is being deceptive to curate your digital identity. In a hyper-visual culture where your feed equals your perceived lifestyle, curating a hot reality for yourself seems expected. And when the real thing is inaccessible, simulation steps in.

Here, wealth becomes aesthetic, and access becomes virtual. The luxury of experiencing something gives way to the luxury of appearing like you did. And in that digital mirage, the difference stops mattering.

The "real" isn’t real anymore

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard coined the idea of simulacra and hyperreality. This is the point where representations of reality become more influential, more desirable, and more real than reality itself.

In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you went to the concert. If the video is slick enough, and the tag looks legit, it’s real enough to shape your identity.

Is this just...sad?

Is this deeply dystopian? Or just another way Gen Z is hacking the system by finding creative, low-cost workarounds to participate in a lifestyle they’re priced out of?

As real-world experiences become more expensive and algorithmic relevance becomes more valuable, services like the one pages like “Get Your Flex” offer may be less of a niche and more of a norm. In the end, maybe what matters most isn’t where you were, but how good the post looks.