Instagram. Ugh. The love hate relationship to END all love
hate relationships. Too much? Nah I don’t think so. Let me just get started
with a screenshot of something I tweeted the other week..
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or you don’t waste your
time on social media like the rest of us sad acts, you’ll probably have seen
that Instagram has been getting a lot of flak lately. Why? Well, if it’s not shit
engagement then followers are dropping, and if it’s not followers dropping it’s
countless comments about being an ambassador for a sunglasses company (where do
I sign up!?).
And that’s without even touching on the fake as fuck environment
that has swallowed up such a vast proportion of our lives. Looking at posed
photos, posing for photos, knowing it’s all fake but feeling the need to join
in anyway. Reading posts about how Instagram is a sham and feeling inspired so
posing for a selfie to write another caption to inspire others about the sham
life we all needn’t be living. The endless cycle of calling bullshit on the
world that is Instagram while continuing to live it with everyone else. Knowing
it’s not good for you but not really being able to stop.. Sounds pretty similar
to an addiction don’t ya think?
Using myself as an example, I will spend HOURS scrolling
through Instagram to end up feeling just as squishy and chubby as I knew I
would, and then worse than that start resenting girls who have perfectly tiny
waists and toned abs when I don’t even know them at all! Then I feel guilty for
being so horrible and thinking negatively about this stranger on the internet
and just end up kind of wallowing in this waaaa I’m just not good enough pit of
weirdness.
BUT it doesn't stop there. We haven't even touched on the burning
fire within that goes by the name of validation. You know in Finding Nemo when
all those seagulls are going MINE, MINE over and over again? I imagine that
Instagram is just a sea of faces going VALIDATE ME, VALIDATE ME, VALIDATE ME!
But guess what? We all fucking do it! You telling me you’ve never deleted a
picture because it didn’t have ‘enough’ likes? I actually get embarrassed if I
don’t have many likes on my picture – genuine real life embarrassment based on
how many likes a photo gets. How bad is that?!!
And that’s what I meant with my tweet. It does feel like a
game, a game that we all know we’re trapped in but are all too scared to leave
– me included! Because what happens if we leave? Will people start forgetting
that we exist? What is life without our online persona that we have grown to
love and in turn grown to hate? What will we be missing out on? WHAT WOULD IT FEEL
LIKE TO HAVE MY LIFE BACK AGAIN. Ok you get the idea. But seriously, I’m just a
big ol’ hypocrite as much as the next person because I haven't done it yet
either.
Another thing I wanted to touch on – especially if my
manager is reading because I really want to keep my job lol hiya – is that social media for
work/business purpose is a totally different ball game. While my blogging
profile is diminishing the profile I run for work is absolutely thriving - better
than it ever has done before. The images work, we get real followers, the
interaction is great and it couldn’t be going better. So why is it different with
our own profiles? Are we more critical when our ‘brand’ is not a product but is
actually ourselves? Our own faces? Our own style? Our bodies? I think so. And it's hard to stand out because every one else in the world is busy posting their
face/style/body hoping to get noticed too. At work I post images of sexy loudspeakers
and people love them because they’re different and they’re something people
haven’t seen before. Maybe that’s the key, maybe people are bored of selfies
now. I know I am. I’ve started using Twitter so much more again because I love
having an actual conversation and writing a thought down without having to
attach it to a lame duckpout picture of my face. Maybe it’s just that
authenticity people want back. Maybe we all wanna start talking to each other
again and put the editing apps down for a while?
To conclude this rambling, I unsurprisingly don’t have a
solution, and I am unsurprisingly still on Instagram. BUT I check it less and
post way less than before and it’s just not taking up as much room in my brain
anymore. God it feels good. Like it’s there when I want it but if I have
nothing to post in a few days then so be it, I‘m not fannying around desperately
trying to find filler content anymore because let's face it who actually fucking cares
whether I post or not anyway? It was most likely only ever me. Yeah I’ll still
use it but I’ll post when I want to post and if I get no likes then I’ll get a
grip and realise I need to stop judging my life on how many flipping LIKES a
post on a social network gets.. cuz let’s be real, likes mean NOTHING anyway,
they are intangible and they shouldn’t even be a second thought in our minds.
OK wow lol I’mma stop writing now because I haven’t checked
Instagram in at least 5 mins and my left eye is starting to twitch. But
seriously, thank you if you got this far and PLEASE get in touch to tell me your
thoughts.
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SHOT BY SARAH TREACHER