It's been a big few months for the women behind popular news Instagram Shit You Should Care About (SYSCA), but they've finally found a way to turn their passion for information into a full-time gig.
When Newshub first sat down with two of the three members behind the punchy news-style Instagram three months ago, Lucy Blakiston and Olivia Mercer were trying to find a business model that was "mutually beneficial" for both themselves and their three-million-strong community.
"It's a strange combination, because we are on Instagram, so that sort of works with the "influencer" model but we don't associate ourselves with that model and don't think it works for us," Mercer told Newshub.
"One of our core beliefs is that we want to make things accessible, so we would never charge people for content," Blakiston said. "We are trying to find this really fair and mutually beneficial model that might not even exist but we're going to get there."
Now they are "there" - with the launch of a web-series, funded by NZ On Air, titled Extremely Online.
The series is all about "diving into the weird corners of the internet in words we can all understand".
"It's so fun and it's going to be so sick - it's going for 25 weeks with an episode a week, and it's not going to finish until Christmas Eve," Blakinston tells Newshub.
The first episode will explore the rise of robot influencers, triggered by Instagram account Lil Miquela, an avatar puppeteered by Los Angeles-based company Brud, who specialize in artificial intelligence and robotics.
The team will be discussing the "ethical and moral implications of robots being influencers", and will later dive into other topics like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
Blakinston has been hard at work learning the web-series ropes, and has had to teach herself how to be a producer, script-writer and voiceover artist.
"It's been a really interesting experience… Liv [Mercer] is now full time doing all of the creatives for it [the web-series] and we're just busy learning how to produce a series," she says.
Over the last three months, SYSCA has gained a million more followers, bringing their grand total to 3,170,390. Unfortunately, with more followers, comes more trolls.
After a few posts in a row that garnered thousands of hateful comments, Blakinston started to put a disclaimer on most of the account's posts, asking followers to read the full article they had posted about before commenting.
"I wanted to make it clear to people that Instagram can't be the start and finish of your education on a topic," she says.
"We always say we aren't experts and we are just a starting point - you need history and you need context to fully understand an issue."
Blakinston believes even though it may be hypocritical considering she runs a news Instagram, it is her "duty" to point this out.
"Even though I will do my best and to give it to you and you have my word on that, I can't say that every other Instagram account is going to do the work or be really careful about what they post," she says.
"I just started thinking that it was my duty to say - even though it seems hypocritical and really really backwards for an Instagram account to say 'don't use an Instagram account for all of your information' I just felt I had to say something, and I'm glad I did."
Extremely Online will be available on Shit You Should Care About's Instagram and Youtube channel from 9am, Friday July 9.
