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  "description": "Are UAE buying Instagram followers?",
  "path": "/spin-cycle-time-is-a-flat-circle/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-24T09:24:37.000Z",
  "site": "https://escapecollective.com",
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    "the website",
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  "textContent": "_**Spin Cycle** is _Escape Collective _’s news digest, published every Monday and Friday. You can read it on_ the website_(obviously) or_ click here_to have it delivered straight to your inbox._\n\nHello!\n\nWelcome back to **Spin Cycle**.\n\nFor the most part, everyone does what is needed to get by. For Chris Froome, that's another impression of the time he ran up Mont Ventoux. For Ineos Grenadiers, it's a highly guarded press conference. For UAE Team Emirates, it's potentially spending a little bit of money on same fake social media followers.\n\nThankfully, for Lenny Martinez, it's getting a moustache.\n\n## Time is a flat circle ⏳\n\nWhen this video of Chris Froome first came across our timeline, we immediately assumed it was AI. The colours are slightly off, the movements of Froome too jarringly out of kilter.\n\nBut no! This is actual Chris Froome aping the time he ran up Mont Ventoux during the Tour de France, with Alejandro Valverde for company this time around. The pair were over in Central America for the Gran Fondo Panama and presumably created this viral moment as part of the sack of money offered to them that got them on the plane in the first place.\n\nPleasingly, during Wednesday's Flèche Wallonne, Axel Laurance (of Froome's former Ineos Grenadiers team) was also forced to run after giving his own bike to team leader Kévin Vauquelin, who had suffered a mechanical.\n\nWe somehow doubt, unfortunately, that this turns into a streets-won't-forget type moment that Laurance can dine out on when he hits the VIP Gran Fondo invitee list in 12 years' time.\n\n## Out here (probably) buying Instagram followers in the year of our Lord 2026 🤦‍♂️\n\nThere was a time when social media followers meant something. You could get free stuff from brands, launch a career as an influencer, or simply wave a big number around to impress people.\n\nBut the jig is up. People have cottoned on to spotting over-inflated follower numbers in comparison to likes and comments, and really to get any money or free stuff from companies these days you need to prove you have a dedicated audience.\n\nSo why, pray tell, is UAE Team Emirates seemingly buying fake followers for their Instagram account (as spotted by Slovakian website biker) making their weekly follower-growth graph for the past year look like a Vuelta a España stage.\n\nA screenshot from socialblade.com, which tracks public social media stats.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "Spin Cycle: Time is a flat circle",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-24T09:24:40.950Z"
}