Hey you, yes, you. Remember the good ol’ days of Instagram? Say, 2013 or 2014 or 2015? You probably posted a not-great photo on a whim from your Motorola Droid X or your (at that time) cutting-edge iPhone Plus 6. And you probably didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. Maybe you posted it later on, and added a #latergram hashtag.
Back then, Instagram was fun. It was new. It wasn’t Facebook. I arrived late to the ‘gram game (joined in 2015) and posted a categorically awful photo of some balloons to announce my debut. Seriously, look. (Even though it’s not much to look at.)
Slowly and surely, as we moved out of the 2010s and into the 2020s, Instagram changed. It lost its edge. As it became more popular, many people (myself included) ironically shared less and less. To quote my teenaged nephews from a few years ago, “It’s not cool to post a lot.”
“It’s not fun, it’s just a lot of pressure”
Plenty of people have been posting in the intervening years — and a whole lot. Celebrities and brands dole out a steady stream of professionally shot posts and stories on a daily basis. Real-life or wannabe influencers find funky backdrops or raise one leg in just the right way or workshop cutesy captions for hours or use all the right filters before they dare post a photo to their walls nowadays. As one friend put it: “It’s not fun, it’s just a lot of pressure.”
Gah.
All of these highly polished and highly curated posts have had a subtle effect on the rest of us, even if we don’t readily admit it. When you’re competing in the feed with the likes of the Kardashians, will you really get a “like” for that not-great photo of the balloons now? Sure, you could put it on a “story,” but if you’re too post-heavy, some followers might tune out (I’m guilty of “muting” people who post too much of that *one* thing). And “your wall” should have an aesthetic (right?) that speaks to who you are, and who exactly are you — or who do you want to broadcast you are, more importantly? Maybe you travel to exotic places or celebrate major life milestones with your closest friends or run marathons or have a perfect relationship or bake delicious foods or have the cutest children or have a closet full of fashionable clothes or, or, or… Good lord, do you get why people who hate social media hate it so much?
What would Anne Frank post?
Covid and the past year have added some other curious elements to the mix. Most of us aren’t going to Bali right now, and if we are, we should probably approach those posts carefully. And then there were the BLM protests, discussions about racial and economic inequality, a polarizing election cycle, an insurrection, not to mention the recession and a still-raging pandemic that has killed 470,000+ Americans. What, exactly, do you want to be known for sharing during these times? A question I’ve often pondered silently: If Anne Frank were alive right now, would she post her diary entries? I posted a series of videos while making bananas foster during the early months of the pandemic and later felt a pang of uncertainty: “Did that come across as insensitive?”
Gah.
It’s a difficult balance to strike, and some people have lost their go-to schtick for content (looking at you, travel-grammers), while other people probably feel fatigued (or depressed or overstressed) by everything that’s happening right now and don’t want to muster up the energy to keep up appearances. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve noticed many people I follow have simply stopped sharing altogether. Curiously enough, that hasn’t necessarily stopped them from lurking as we’ve all become hard-wired social media addicts at this point.
A choose-your-own-adventure
In my experience, I’ve noticed 3 pretty distinct approaches to Instagram in the past year: 1) Stop posting altogether. 2) Lean into some of the weirdness of these times. 3) Keep posting away as normal. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure of sorts.
To the #1 crowd, I ask: “Has nothing happened in the past year that’s share-worthy?” To the #3 crowd, I say: “You do you.” And to the #2 crowd, I say: “Hello, my peoples” because I probably resonate most with them. One friend recently posted a few photos of her TV while Wheel of Fortune was playing and asked us all to guess the answer. It was weird, and I loved it. Another friend posts her skylight in various weather conditions. I imagine she’s laying on her back and looking up at it. I dunno if that’s true, but again, I dig it. Another friend sometimes makes his food look like funny faces, and it is the content I need for a good laugh many days. Another friend posts about the skating rink she installed in her backyard, and again, sign me up. Another posts funny little messages with her Christmas village display each year, and this year I noticed myself missing those posts (edit: She did post, but I missed most of them). None of this “content” is highly polished or trying too hard or a humblebrag in disguise. Instead, it resonates (with me, at least) because it’s like: “Yep, this is my life right now. [insert shrug emoji]”
This is not to say that there isn’t a place for the highlight reel of what’s happening in your life. The above people also share the A-side of their life, they’re also just letting me (and others) in on the B-side. I certainly have no idea what is the “right” amount to post or not to post, but we all keep coming back day after day after day and sorta hating the entire experience.
My Instagram “strategy” admittedly is much, much different than other people. I only follow a very small handful of celebrities (namely: those who inspire me or make me laugh). I don’t want a million followers (just on Twitter!). My test for followers is: “Would I talk to this person if I ran into them on the street?” If the answer is no, then snip-snip, I cut ‘em loose. I don’t follow animal accounts. Or kid accounts (unless they’re blood relatives). I routinely cull who I’m following because I want Instagram to be a positive space. In writing this, I looked back at some of my posts where I definitely tried way too hard to portray a certain lifestyle or persona, and I cringe. I started using the “close friends” feature in the fall, and found that I liked Instagram a lot more again because it felt — for lack of better words — more “intimate” again. I recently saw someone post something with a few hashtags intended for that bigger audience and had to remind myself, “Oh, right, some people are still trying to grow their following.” Meanwhile, I’m just willfully ignoring follow requests and debating when I can cut a few people loose. LOL.
MGWA
Anyway, here is my call to action: Join me, fellow Instagrammers, and let’s post to Instagram like it’s the early 2010s again. Let’s MGWA: Make the ‘gram weird again. It doesn’t have to be so flipping serious. Life is weird right now, let’s embrace some of that weirdness. Your weird is different than my weird, but there’s enough space for all of our weirdness to co-exist. Am I self designating as some sort of arbiter of what is and isn’t “right” for Instagram? Uh, no. Do whatever you want. All I’m saying is if you find yourself hating social media, you have two options: Make it better or leave.
Let’s make it fun again.