Instagram & Me: RIP
..as in the relationship is RIP. Not me. I'm still alive. But you got that, right?
So. How are we all feeling about instagram these days? Still loving it for a little bit of daily escapism? Or weary of it, and all that it represents? I gotta tell you, when it comes to the ‘gram, I think I’m done. We’ve had our fun, some good times and some bad, but I think we just have different needs going forward. It’s not it, it’s me, etc etc.
It’s like this: I have a neighbour who I have never met. I suspect that they are a singular inhabitant, in a one bed flat, though I am not certain. They are on the ground floor of a building with a massive window, and I’m given to stealing a quick glance in when I walk by. Inadvertent, but gratifying voyeurism, if you (legally) will. They have a baby grand piano in their open plan living room, and a huge (HUGE!) stuffed bear permanently resides on their sofa. My eyes can’t get enough.
Similarly, one of my favourite things in this world is, when driving through London after nightfall, noticing that some city dwellers have left their lights on, and curtains or blinds undrawn. The pictures on their walls, dinner plates not yet cleared away, clothes horses precariously decked with laundry are all clear to be seen. Call it curiosity, call it nosiness, but these glimpses are fascinating - not because of what I’m seeing, per se, but because of the unselfconscious, authentic lives being lived that they allude to.
Instagram felt a lot like that in its early days. Like being welcomed into the intimate daily worlds of (an)other(s).
In those early heady days, everyone was eager to share, and to be shared with. We were all making it up as we went along, winging it, with no strategy in mind. I don’t remember ever caring if anyone liked or commented upon anything that I posted, but I remember being delighted with myself if I landed a witty caption. And I remember loving seeing what other people - both those whom I knew well, and those less so - were posting too.
We all got to think that we were accessing the sacred parts of each other’s lives, the inner sanctums. It is surely from that proximity that the perception of connection stems. And we are all programmed to seek connection, even the introverts, so albeit a shallow connection, we did feel like this novel type of media was truly connecting us - that it truly was social.
It’s not like that now, though, is it. Somewhere between celebrities with managed accounts and algorithms trying to work out what to serve us, it has become less like a peek into the unprepared homes, and more like homes after a deep clean, or after it’s been dressed to put on the market. Everything is curated and considered. The clothes horses laden with clothes have been tidied away. Each person’s PR campaign for their life.
It is now a scramble to go viral, rather than a scramble to connect. I don’t even recognise most of the people who show up on my timeline. There are those becoming more audacious, using loud garish controversy to vie for attention spans that don’t stretch beyond a few seconds anyway. Or it’s a wholesome hangout, incubating the pressure to be aesthetically pleasing at all times. And when captioning, it is a fine line between actually communicating something, without committing the cardinal sin of sounding like you might earnestly care about what you’re saying, because that might give the six people who read it to the end the ick (ie social suicide). You can’t win - not that there is a prize if you do get the balance right anyway.
I have further, miscellaneous grievances with instagram, of course: my own personal relationship with it has been wild. From the guy who surreptitiously copied and pasted my captions to pass off as his own over on Facebook, to being trolled for my ankles (trolling surely means you have #madeit, though, right?), to the solace of outfit sharing during a rocky lockdown, to DMs opening the gateway to the most damaging of relationships, it has been, sometimes against my better judgement, my chosen scrapbook of life.
It has taken me a long time to workout if my relationship with IG is truly healthy. I have stood accused - both by my inner critic (always keen to have a pop, is that one), and others - of enjoying Instagram for reasons that rendered me shallow. Being a shame sponge, at a time that criticism was readily absorbed. In hindsight, I think that was an inaccurate assertion by my inner critic and others. I don’t think I ever fell into the category of documenting my life instead of living it. But I do think that there was a time when I was perhaps lonely, and looked to it for connection that I wasn’t getting IRL.
In any case, those days are gone. I’m not quite ready to hit delete, but I’m not far off.
Anyone else? Let me know.
Until Wednesday when you are getting a list of the best bikini brands to know…I’m off now to plug this post on the ‘gram. Ah the irony.
Big Love
Una
x
Like you i'm done with posting on Instagram and from hearing natters on Twitter and Threads, many people are going down the same route. I got fed up with people not seeing my images, all the spam messages and account (ususally from fake celeb) and having zero engagement.
I'm not quite ready to delete but i'm done with posting on it and recently I downloaded all my images so I have a record in years to come.