You probably saw the notice Instagram sent out last week letting users know they'd see their follower account plummet into the depths of Hades, but they never exactly told us why. Why, Instagram, why are you taking away the robot accounts that make us feel pretty?! Hint: It has to do with advertising.

You probably saw the notice Instagram sent out last week letting users know they'd see their follower account plummet into the depths of Hades, but they never exactly told us why. Why, Instagram, why are you taking away the robot accounts that make us feel pretty?! Hint: It has to do with advertising.

Instagram will delete between 2 million and 10 million fake users over the next few days as, simply because they'd like you to be more susceptible to adverisements.  All the fake accounts, it seems, are muddling with advertiser's metrics.

And everyone knows advertisers can't sell you polo shirts and discounted airfares if you're a souless robot made of 1s and 0s. No. You must be a sentient being capable of pain and empathy if you wish to be bombarded with such offers.

Which, of course, you don't. No one wants to scroll through pictures of their ex and their happy new life with "Jenna" while crying, only to be rudely interrupted by a message from Geico about a lizard.  That's invasive and totally doesn't help our procrasinating or avoidance of social contact like the old Instagram does. Why you gotta go and make us more vulnerable to commercial interests when all we want to do is contemplate the meaning of Jenna?

Although it does make sense that so many users were fake … we were wondering why we had 12K followers when all we post are photos of Asian food.

“We want to maintain the best possible experience on Instagram, so we do our best to remove spam, fake accounts and other people and posts that don't follow our Community Guidelines,” Instagram says on its website.

Yes, Instagram, the best possible experience is totally one where we're visually assaulted by Nissan Sentra ads. Where else would we ever find such fascinating information?

This robot follower murder spree has fake account sellers like Rantic.com nervous about what may happen to their business. U.K.-based Rantic sells fake Instagram followers; for $4.99, for example, Instagram users can purchase 500 followers. Or, they can get 100 Likes for $1.45.

Rantic gets its fake followers from Russian programmers who design “bots” that are capable of creating 5 million to 25 million fake accounts over a few weeks. Rantic estimates that 10 to 15 percent of all accounts on Instagram are fake. That's right, all those people you thought really appreciated your #tbt offering, didn't, because they weren't real.

However, Rantic and other similar will be okay, because fortunately for you they've promised to replace any follower accounts that are lost during the sweep. That'll be quite a tall task, especially if Instagram keeps with their promise of deleting 10 million fakies. That's good news for your ego.

You can keep saying "I am popular. I am popular." to yourself in a foggy bathroom mirror.