Deez Interviews: Meet the (anonymous) owner of the @bagdogs Instagram account you should all be following
Happy Friday, Deezers! Today’s interview is with the anonymous owner of the best corner of Instagram on earth, AKA, the @bagdogs account wherein people send in pics of dogs in bags that they’ve seen on the New York subway (for non-NYers: it’s a logical and hilarious consequence of this rule where animals that aren’t in a “container” are banned on the subway...idk it’s wild out here guys).
Anyway, @bagdogs has more than 34,000 followers, and we recently got in touch with the account owner to find out how much work it takes to run this kind of account, what it was like to grow it, and what their fave recent submission have been (obvi). Enjoy!
^^a lil taste of @bagdogs for u there’s more later
When did you first get the idea to start @bagdogs?
Ever since I moved to NYC, I took personal photos of dogs in bags on the train. I had always thought, “hmm, this would make a pretty good niche Instagram, and who doesn’t love a dog in a bag??” Eventually, once my bagdog stockpile was big enough, I started posting them. Not too long after, I started getting submissions, which is all I’ve really posted for the last few years. I pretty much consider the account just an aggregation of top crowdsourced bag dog content.
What was it like to grow the account to 34K followers?
The process was really, really long! My first post is from October 2015. This was right around the time I started at BuzzFeed and I definitely thought, “if any company I work for is going to help my account blow up, it’s going to be BuzzFeed.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case at all. I think one editor did a post about bagdogs, and it didn’t really do anything for my follower growth. Also, if I recall correctly, they didn’t even know I was a BuzzFeed employee! But yea, follower growth was super slow, but it wasn’t something I was ever concerned with because I’m just doing this because it’s fun and I like pictures of dogs in bags.
Then about a few months ago I noticed a huge influx of followers, and a lot of the people had something media-related in their bios. I posted a story that said something along the lines of “Where are all you media people coming from!?” And I got a ton of DMs linking me to a tweet from a media person with a decent following linking to my account and then a bunch of DMs that were like “Gothamist dog slack channel reporting in!”
It was pretty cool to me (as a data scientist) to trace how it all happened. From that point on I’ve had really steady and consistent follower growth. I think I probably passed an algorithm threshold or something. All that being said, the best part about the recent surge in followers is that I get so, so much content submitted, which I love.
What are the logistics of running the account on a day by day basis?
I usually always have a post in mind, and I keep all the good ones flagged in my DMs. I’ll check my DMs when I wake up in the morning to see if there’s a new better piece of content, but really the logistics are just picking the best posts from my DMs. I also make a point to respond to almost everyone (except the annoying people, and yes there are annoying people).
I definitely spend way too much time on my phone throughout the day, but that’s more just because I’m addicted to my phone, not because I need to do it to maintain the account.
What is one aspect about managing the Insta account that would surprise your followers if they knew?
I don’t have anything really surprising about the account, but I will share this surprising fact as it relates to bag dogs:
In 2015, only 219 out of 75,000 total transit summonses were for unauthorized animals on the train. Also, the fine is only $25.
So even though everyone loves to talk about the whole “you MUST have your dog in a bag on the train” thing, in actuality you’re probably not going to get caught and even if you do it will only cost you $25.
Finally, what are some of your favorite @bagdogs posts?
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Don’t forget to follow @bagdogs on Insta, and have a well-transported weekend!