Who Would I Be Without Instagram?

“There are plenty of well-documented reasons to distrust Instagram — the platform where one is never not branding, never not making Facebook money, never not giving Facebook one’s data — but most unnerving are the ways in which it has led me to distrust myself. After countless adventures through the black hole, my propensity to share, perform, and entertain has melded with a desire far more cynical: to be liked, quantifiably, for an idealized version of myself, at a rate not possible even ten years ago.

I think I am a writer and an actor and an artist. But I haven’t believed the purity of my own intentions ever since I became my own salesperson, too.”

Who Would I Be Without Instagram? An investigation. By Tavi Gevinson

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  1. Maybe leave IG for your personal (but not too personal) experiences, instead of using it for any sort of professional/career-type platform. My IG is purely for my enjoyment – I share pics of my girls, my plants, my house, and other visuals I find beautiful. I also use Chatbooks, which pours my IG posts into printed memory books, which I consider our family albums. I think the most “likes” I’ve ever received is 49 or so; most posts get less than 20. But it’s not about that – I’m not self-promoting or bragging, I’m simply sharing. And if you like it, you like it.

    I also find if I go to my feed, all the posts are so generic and promoted. But when I search under a hashtag, or dive into the accounts of those who have liked a post of mine, suddenly I’m exploring “someone’s” account that feels much more “real”.

    PS: lately I’m on a jewelry kick, and man – some of the IG accounts with jewelry are STUNNING! Loving that IG-fed visual fodder :) Gotta have fun with it!