David Attenborough joins Instagram and breaks world record

Natural historian Sir David Attenborough has joined Instagram to stress the need to save the planet — while breaking a world record in the process.

Yes, apparently modern society’s inaction over climate change and humanity’s damage to the planet prompted the nonagenarian to join the social network in hopes of reaching a wider audience.

The account’s first post was a video of Attenborough stressing the ecological crisis facing the planet.

 

 

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A post shared by A Life On Our Planet (@davidattenborough) on Sep 24, 2020 at 2:00am PDT

In the process, the account also broke the world record for the fastest time taken for an Instagram account to reach one million followers.

Guinness World Records announced the new record on their website. The new account accrued one million followers in just over four hours.

At the time of writing, the account had over 2.9 million followers. In fact, in the time it took to write this piece, the following climbed by over 200 000.

The account is run by the filmmakers of A Life On Our Planet, the film that Attenborough is currently promoting. But it shares video recordings of Attenborough that were made specifically for Instagram.

“Social media isn’t David’s usual habitat so while he’s recorded messages solely for Instagram, like the one in this post, we’re helping to run this account,” the first post notes.

Nevertheless, followers seem more than ready to see the exclusive clips of Attenborough.

After all, the 94-year-old’s soothing voice has become a hallmark of nature documentaries.

Feature image: Screenshot