BitLife Social Media Update Guide: How to Become Internet Famous Through the All-New Social Media Update

If you haven’t downloaded BitLife, the iOS and Android life simulator from Candywriter, then it’s probably time for you to do so right now. With its second year fast approaching, this game has become much bigger and better than we ever thought it would, what with the numerous challenges we’ve covered in recent months, as well as the many, many updates that have expanded its features in so many ways. Indeed, there are more ways than ever for you to create a Bitizen and live your best (or worst) life in the game’s parameters.

As the months go by, we’ve seen many much-awaited updates hit the App Store and Play Store, and we believe there may be more to come, with fans demanding features that may, for instance, allow Bitizens to live life as royals or as famous athletes. However, last week saw another much-in-demand new update make its way to players, and that’s the Social Media Update, aka BitLife version 1.37.

With this update, it’s now possible to become the next Jake or Logan Paul (hopefully without the controversies) or start your modeling career via Instagram or other platforms, or possibly become a renowned creator of gaming videos. Read on, as this new BitLife guide will show you what you need to do to become a certified, albeit virtual internet celebrity!

Five Major Social Media Networks Are Now Available In BitLife

Previously, BitLife’s in-game social media system was very cut-and-dry — create a singular social media account that you can maintain all throughout, with the option to submit a general post and no way to get an unreal number of followers aside from becoming famous in show business, politics, or as a writer. With the new update, however, the five most important social media networks in the real world are now available, and they come under their actual names — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube.

Under each network, you can do a variety of things that anyone can do in real life while on these sites, and if you play your cards right, you just might become a Bitizen celebrity in a whole new way — not as a famous actor, singer, writer, lawmaker, or what have you, but as a full-fledged internet-famous person or influencer. On this token, it is highly recommended that your Looks stats are 80 or higher if you’re trying to become an online celebrity.

All five social media platforms can now be found under the Social Media tab in Activities, which will become available once you turn 13 years old. From there, you can choose to become a member on all five networks, some of them, or even none of them if social media simply isn’t your thing. But since this guide is mainly about the new social media features and how to become internet-famous, we’re going to take a look at the different ways in which you can build your fanbase and interact with other people in this virtual version of the social media universe — without, of course, having the benefit of celebrity through the conventional means.

Replying To Celebrities – Best Recommended When You’re Actually Famous

The first thing you may notice when you check the Social Media features in BitLife is the option to reply to celebrities, which is available on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The folks at Candywriter have added dozens of celebrities who may randomly show up as people you can interact with, ranging from famous actors and actresses (Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Mark Wahlberg, Seth Rogen, etc.), singers and musicians (Beyonce, Post Malone, Billie Eilish, even the late Juice WRLD, etc.), athletes across all major sports (Steph Curry, Tom Brady, Conor McGregor, Neymar, etc.), celebrity chefs (Gordon Ramsay), all the Kardashian-Jenner women, and even a couple of first ladies (Michelle Obama and Melania Trump). But how can you interact with these famous people in the BitLife universe?

The first of the four options in the “Pick your Strategy” drop-down box is Compliment, and this is the safest and most negative consequence-free choice. Most of the time, especially if you’re not yet famous as a Social Media Star, they will ignore your compliment — just like real celebrities usually do, given their oftentimes millions of followers. Sometimes, however, they may like your post and start following you, though this typically happens once you’ve gained at least some fame.

The second option is to Insult, and by doing this, you will be calling celebrities by any of the several colorful insults available in the game. Most of the time, they will ignore you, but sometimes, they may choose to outright block you, thus removing themselves from the list of available celebrities that you can reply to in the future. It’s similar for the Troll option, which is the fourth and last one. Trolling a celeb may include creating a burner account to make fun of them, creating a poll for your fans to gauge their trustworthiness, leaving childish comments on their pages, and the like. Most of the time, they may react, but other times, they may choose to block you, and if you keep trolling famous people enough, your account may get suspended.

Related: BitLife Politics Update Guide: How to Win Every Election and Become President

The most interesting of the four choices is Profess Love, which all boils down to you telling the celebrity that you are romantically attracted to them. As this is, in almost every case, a downright creepy act in the real world, celebrities may block you if they don’t ignore you altogether, although there are some times when a celebrity might find this cute and like your post, or even follow you. (No, we don’t think it’s possible to actually date these celebrities’ NPC likenesses.) One thing to keep in mind, though — using this could constitute as cheating if you’re in a relationship or married, so beware your partner’s wrath if you declare your love for Justin Bieber or one of the Kardashian-Jenners on social media!

Submitting The Right Social Media Posts – The Key To Becoming Internet Famous

In order to become an internet celebrity, you’ll need to make some posts on the social media platform of your choice. That said, Post (aka Tweet on Twitter, natch) is obviously an option on all five networks, though the types of posts may vary. There are too many types of posts to individually break down for the purposes of this guide, but we’re going to look at certain types that we believe may give you the best chances of gaining a ton of followers.

It may take some patience and multiple posts, but going viral is the key to exponentially increasing that fanbase to the point where you’ve got tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands of them on at least one platform. Generally, Random Videos, which are available on all networks except YouTube, are a good way to randomly (no pun intended) luck out and have a video go viral. These would feature your character, well, doing random things like shouting, sneezing, speaking in different accents, or even creating Play-Doh sculptures.

Challenge and Dance Videos, which are available on all platforms, generate some attention and sometimes go viral but not as often as you think, while Sexy Pics and Thirst Traps, which essentially require you to wear skimpy clothing (if any at all) and titillate your fanbase, serve as a cheap and easy way to get those views and add some followers, with the tiny chance of going viral. Both of the latter two options are available everywhere except TikTok and YouTube, and are recommended if your character is especially good-looking.

Again, Random Videos are usually the best way to go — we suggest mixing things up between Random, Challenge, Dance, and Sexy Pic/Thirst Trap posts on the networks where these are available. But if you’re on TikTok and YouTube, you will notice two options that have given us — and other players — good results as well. For both video-sharing networks, you can choose the BitLife option to share videos of yourself playing the game, and the Gaming option in YouTube allows you to channel your inner PewDiePie and attract followers by walking them through your favorite video games, from Tetris to NBA 2K and everything in between. Both these video types have gone viral for us in a few playthroughs, so feel free to add them in your mix of social media posts!

Again, becoming a big social media star is not an overnight process — you may need to go viral several times over before you hit that 100,000 mark, typically on Instagram before all the other platforms. But post enough videos of the right kind (as mentioned above) and you’ll get there, and keep on growing that fanbase long enough and you’ll be famous as a Social Media Star before you know it!

How Can You Lose Followers Through Your Posts?

We all know that politics are a sensitive topic. Regardless whether you lean left or lean right or are right in the middle, you’re bound to lose fans who happen to think differently from you if you share your political opinions on social media. Then you’ve got those fans who may or may not agree with your politics, but call you out anyway because they don’t want their celebrities stepping foot on the political minefield and going outside their supposed area of expertise. That’s how it is in real life, and that’s also how it is in BitLife — regardless if you’re a big social media star or a social media nobody, posting political stuff (an option available on all five platforms) is a shortcut to losing followers quickly.

That too applies if you somehow become a Famous Politician — campaigning for your own party on social media could eat away at your fanbase! The Social Justice option, which is available everywhere except YouTube, is similar to Political but far less harmful when it comes to your fanbase, so you can use this option if you want your internet famous Bitizen to be “woke” in one way or another.

Aside from Political posts, we’ve also observed that Family Photos can also cause you to lose some followers, though the effect isn’t as obvious as it is when you post about your politics. We figure that fans of celebrities in the BitLife universe consider such updates to be boring and far removed from the world of fame and fortune — we don’t necessarily agree with this, but if you want to maintain that fanbase, Family Photos are not advisable.

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We’re not sure if this is a quirk with the game, but we’ve noticed that once you’ve become an Instagram influencer who’s famous enough to promote various types of products on the platform, ANY type of post will result in a ton of likes, but several followers lost. Whether it’s a typically popular Thirst Trap or Random Video or a serious Political post or a warm Family Photo, these posts will result in a loss of followers, no matter how popular the post appears to be in terms of likes. That means you may want to stick to promoting products on IG in order to keep the fanbase strong.

Promoting Products As An Influencer – Do It Often (And Do It Right) To Reach Famous Status

Once you’ve reached 5,000 followers on any given social media platform, the option to Promote a product will become available. Don’t expect to earn much from this in the early goings — it’s not uncommon to earn less than $10 for a product endorsement while your followers are still in the thousands and not even in the tens of thousands. But it’s recommended to keep on endorsing products and do so as often as possible — before those numbers really add up per year thanks to your status as a Social Media Star, lots of endorsements before hitting the Age button could help those fanbases noticeably grow in your early, not-quite-famous years as an influencer!

Although it’s tempting to accept just about every offer you see, especially if you could stand to earn far more than your usual endorsement, it’s always a good idea to check the type of product you’re being asked to promote. Endorsing sportswear, lingerie (yes, even for male Bitizens), breakfast cereals, snack foods, noodles, and other everyday, oftentimes trendy products usually result in a green Response bar, which is where you want to be if you want to see significantly more followers per year. Even a perfect Response wouldn’t result in added followers, though if you hit the Age button, you’ll see the results of your smart choice of product endorsement paying off.

On the other hand, there are certain products that are simply too weird to promote, no matter how good-looking, smart, or famous you are. So if a company asks you to promote their new penis pump or erectile dysfunction medication on social media, you’re better off rejecting that offer and moving on to the next one, if one is available. (The more famous you are, the more promotional offers you’re likely to get.)

The same applies to mortgage products, trucking services, and other things that may be useful to people in a number of ways, but aren’t appealing enough for influencers to promote through the usual social media channels — promote them and you’re likely to see a red or orange Response bar and fewer followers thanks to your uninspiring advert for the product in question.

Random Events – Dealing With Trolls, Account Suspensions, And Hacks

Every time you post or promote something on social media in BitLife, there’s always the chance someone won’t take too kindly to what you posted, no matter how popular it is with the majority. That’s just how it works in the real world, and in this virtual world, you will meet all manner of online miscreants who may want to call you out for your hairy legs or other alleged physical imperfections, grammatical mistakes, or general irrelevance of your post, or possibly create an embarrassing meme based on the photo or video you shared. That’s right, online trolls are a thing in the BitLife Social Media update, and there are multiple ways in which you can deal with them.

The first option would be to ask the troll to meet you in person — most of the time, they’ll prove to be little more than all-talk no-action keyboard warriors and decline your invite, but sometimes, they just might take you up on your offer. Once the two of you meet, you’ll be given another set of options — proceed with the meeting or not? — and if you decide to meet, you will see the person’s name, age, occupation, and a Friendliness meter. A red or orange Friendliness meter may leave you with no choice but to get down and dirty and Scuffle with them, or possibly insult them in person like they did to you on the internet.

Just like insulting belligerent bar patrons in the club, expect them to come at you with force. Otherwise, you can choose to take the high road and befriend the troll, or if you want to take a chance on an unlikely love story, you could even ask them to go on a date with you. The latter option, of course, would give you the best results if you’re single and their Friendliness bar is close to full.

As for the other options when replying to online trolls, you can simply Ignore them, though that’s far from guaranteed to shut them up for good. What you’ll want to do, in that case, would be to Block them, thus erasing them from your online life forever, though you can always expect for more trolls to come along as long as you’re on social media. You can also choose to Troll them right back, which could lead to two things — the person may ask to meet you in person, or your account could get suspended for abusive behavior. Choosing the former option won’t always give you the same four options we discussed above for face-to-face meetings with trolls — oftentimes, they’ll simply choose to beat you up or maim you, no questions asked!

Speaking of getting suspended, we’ve noticed that you can get randomly suspended from any of the five platforms for “Unspecified” reasons. No matter how often you ignore trolls and generally stay out of trouble on social media, this could happen from time to time, upon which you’ll have five strategies to choose from — act confused, apologize, claim a misunderstanding, threaten, or write an angry email. Apologizing is the best option if you were in the wrong (i.e. you really did troll somebody), but you can choose Act Confused or Claim a Misunderstanding for those mystery suspensions. The latter two options, obviously, will not impress the powers that be and definitely have a chance of increasing the length of your suspension.

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Additionally, it is also possible for your social media accounts to get hacked, resulting in abusive behavior that doesn’t come from your end, or perhaps some adult videos suddenly appearing on your feed. This will result in some people unfollowing or unsubscribing, and once this happens, you can either delete your account, apologize to your followers, or laugh it off. Sadly, the best thing to do is simply to rebuild that fanbase, as none of the three choices will magically result in those lost fans coming back to the fold.

Trolling People On Social Media – Troll BitLife At Your Own Risk

We should actually preface this section by saying “troll anyone at your own risk,” but before we get to that, let’s talk about how the Troll option works. This is available under Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and the type of trolling you will carry out is random in almost all cases. The only thing you’ll have to decide is whom to troll — do you troll your family, friends, some random celebrities that may pop up, or @BitLifeApp?

Granted, every choice except BitLife could result in one or more of these things happening — your Relationship bar with the friend or family member you trolled may suffer, you may be blocked by the person you trolled, you may be suspended from the platform for abusive behavior, or the target may simply ignore you. It’s just a fun little option with a few risks involved, except when you’re trolling BitLife.

Once you choose @BitLifeApp as your trolling target, you will see yourself demanding a new update from the game’s makers, or possibly requesting some sort of ridiculous patch like an “incest update.” But doing so will also result in an embarrassing medical condition — bowel incontinence, diarrhea, erectile dysfunction, and hemorrhoids are just some of the many conditions you could suffer if you choose to get pushy with Candywriter and pressure them for an update — at least in the in-game universe!

Don’t Buy Followers – Try This Trick Instead

For all platforms except Facebook, you will have the choice to buy followers — you can buy as few as 100 for around $9 or as many as 5,000 for $142 or thereabouts, and if you come to think about it, those are very affordable rates if you want to take some shortcuts and gain more fans, stat. However, those bought fans won’t do much for your engagement numbers — we’ve noticed that views pretty much remain the same and new follower counts are rather low even if you buy followers. You posts, after all, are appreciated only by the fans you gained organically and not the ones you purchased. As such, we don’t really recommend employing such a strategy in BitLife.

We’re not discussing the Delete option per se, but we’re mentioning it here, because that’s exactly what you need to do in order to see a huge jump in your organic follower count. Once you’ve gained a huge following on a certain platform, say, Instagram, delete your accounts on your other platforms and open new ones — in one playthrough, our Bitizen’s Instagram fanbase was already at 50,000+, TikTok was at around 2,000, and the rest were well below that figure.

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We closed the other four non-IG accounts and opened new ones, and it worked like a charm — it didn’t get the fanbases anywhere near the IG figure, but Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter were all in the 6,000-8,000 range once we tried this trick.

Wait Till You’re Famous Before Getting Verified

One aspect of social media has remained from previous versions of BitLife, and that’s the verification mechanic — you can’t expect to be verified if you’re still a relative nobody. Generally, we recommend waiting until your Fame meter is at 25 percent or greater as a Social Media Star before getting all your accounts verified, though if you have more than 200,000 followers on any given platform but aren’t famous yet, it is still possible to get that blue check mark instead of the platform’s logo in the Social Media menu.

Just make sure you aren’t asking to be verified more than once a year — we haven’t seen any negative consequences from this yet, but we’re quite confident that this could be cause for account suspension if you badger the social networks too often for verification.

Monetization Is Available On YouTube Even If You Aren’t Famous

Last, but not the least, Monetize is a feature that is unique to the YouTube platform, and it allows you to earn money from the videos that you post on the video-sharing site. While conventional wisdom may suggest that this is a feature best used when you’re already famous, it actually isn’t — we’re not sure what the specific follower cutoff is, but once you’ve got about 500 or so on YouTube, you can apply for monetization and earn money no matter how poorly your video performs in terms of views.

Of course, that will mean earning a measly dollar for a video that got less than 50 views, for instance, though once you become famous, it’s far easier to reap the benefits of monetization, minimal as they may seem compared to the money you can earn for promoting products as an influencer.