on the unbearable lightness of being on Instagram

(I'm going to sneakily cut this long rambling essay into smaller, bite-size sections by injecting peaceful summery photographs here and there simply because, apparently, Instagram has affected our attention spans and we no longer have the patience for reading long rambling essays. So here's a sunset for you, folks!)

I recently read someone saying, on Instagram obviously, how they thought we were talking so much about Instagram on Instagram lately. They found it a little silly and unnecessary, but while I agree that talking about Instagram on Instagram is a tad too meta not to be a little funny, I find myself disagreeing about the need to talk about it.

You see, if we don’t talk about social media on social media, where we can reach the maximum amount of people, and just keep doing it without an ounce of critique, we’re letting the big businesses win. And while I will not be going into details, in this particular piece, about the practices behind building social media applications, we probably all know by now that they are designed to be addictive for the purposes of making money. The funny little app called Instagram is not only making big bucks for the influencers but also for Facebook Inc. which owns it. So if by talking about the ways we use the app we can make people question, even a bit, the necessity of some of the Instagram paradigms that so many seem to abide by, then talk we must, is how I see it.

Our society at large has been driven by the ethos of 'constant growth' at least as long as our economic system of choice has been capitalism. This same ethos seems to be our underlying Instagram paradigm as well; nearly everyone seems to be under the impression that on Instagram we need to be growing, not as people but our follower amount. I catch myself sometimes falling for this, even now, after all the experience I have on the subject and as conscious as I try to remain of being on Instagram when I’m there. 

I think I need to explain that a little, in case you haven’t known me for long, my claim of experience and Instagram background. See, until March of this year, I was consciously growing an account that is no more, because I deleted it. Temporarily only, because I found myself questioning whether I really should or not (more on that below).

I started gramming back in 2015 after blogging steadily for six years, and at first it was just a way of staying in touch with my blogging friends who had all seemed to gravitate towards the app in the past year. Many of my blog followers also started following me on the app, and I kept following people whose blogs I’d been reading. I took part in challenges for fun, because at that time a lot of people were doing them, and sometimes my photos would get picked as winners by larger accounts, so my follower amount kept kind of accidentally growing.

In the autumn of 2016 I had somewhere between one to two thousand followers, and that’s when I was asked to become a part of a comment pod. We’d talk all things Instagram and were all there for one another to help our accounts grow by commenting, liking and recommending each others’ posts. It felt a little obsessive to me, the way the group was set on this growing thing, so after about six months I took my leave. But I already had a decent following, so I was often asked to do #followfriday, where a previously agreed upon group of people would recommend each others’ accounts on their grid or in Stories. I did quite a few, until the inauthenticity of it became too much and I started politely declining them.

Despite not making much publicity effort, after that, to keep my account growing, grow it did — because I had already figured out what my audience was expecting of me and I kept delivering that, and mostly that only. It felt pretentious and limiting to me, and as someone trying to live slowly and simply, I found myself questioning whether in fact this whole Instagram thing was worthwhile. I was a working mom with a stressful job, and managing my account took a lot of time because I wished to remain polite & kind, so kept answering all my DMs, comments, requests and so on. Sometimes there’d be close to a hundred a day to answer. And you know, you hear  all these minimalist and slow living influencers talking about our need to cut down on our screen time, and while I was nodding my head reading their words, here I was, my eyes on my screen. 

It became a moral dilemma for me, in many ways. Was I living as I was preaching? (No and yes.)  Was it ok for me to expose myself to thousands of people while telling my daughter and my students at work to beware of social media? (Well, yes and no, kind of.) Was my presence there of use to anyone? (Yes, I think. At least I got a lot of messages that suggested so.) Did it bring me enough value to justify the time spent on it? (I think this question was the deal breaker.) If I turned it into a business, would I feel comfortable selling people stuff they didn’t necessarily need in their lives? (Not really.)

So, in March of 2019 I deleted my account. At that point I had 13.4k followers. I had already started a small private account a year earlier, when I had felt uneasy & unwilling to share with so many people and had needed a break from my big account, but had wished to remain in touch with friends & family. I also do love taking pictures, so I wanted to keep sharing them. Quitting my biggish account completely I found myself thinking I wanted to invite more of my Instagram friends to follow me there, on private, if they wished to, because I really did feel some of these people had become friends during the years we’d been talking on the app.

As I was getting ready to send DMs to the people I wished to stay in touch with, though, I found myself facing a problem. I had no idea which of the 500 people I was following were actually my friends, or which of them considered themselves my friends to the extent that they’d be willing to follow an account that wasn’t curated, would on occasion have poor quality photos on it, and wouldn’t be so theme-driven as my big account. Were they really friends at all? Can you be friends with people you’ve never met?

So I ended up only messaging a handful of people, and after giving it some thought, returned to my big account for one more day to tell people the handle of my private account, and that they were free to follow me on there if I liked. I only accepted follow requests from people I remembered connecting with or who had legitimate, public accounts because, I told myself, I needed no trolls in my space.

I found it liberating. Instagram was fun for me again, and I fell in love with taking pictures again, too, because I wasn’t limiting my subject matter anymore to suit an audience with a specific taste. I was no longer set on growth but just communication — only community, no competition. Like I had a group of 200 friends I was chatting to. Isn’t that what social media is supposed to be about?

Yet I felt there was something lacking there for me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. What it was, though, honestly came to me this summer while reading a book on Instagram I had never thought I’d buy but bought anyway, out of curiosity I suppose. I skipped most of the IG advice in it because I had absolutely no interest in it and already knew most of it actually, but boy was I inspired by Sara’s words on creativity and photography.

And that’s when I realized I had completely stopped pushing myself creatively, photography-wise. Thus far, for the past ten years, I had been taking pictures daily, trying to improve my skills, and sharing the results with the world. And while posting curated content with limited subject matter on my big account had certainly stifled some of my creative instincts, so had not sharing publicly. 

I don’t know why that is? But I do think that it has to do with photography and non-fiction writing having become, over the years, my main forms of artistic self-expression. I realize I will never be the sort of photographer whose work will be exhibited at a gallery, but I think my blog and my Instagram have been my gallery for the past ten years; they have been my exhibition, my way of showcasing both my work and my growth as an artist. And I think that ultimately, what every artist wants, is for their work to be seen, to be appreciated, perhaps even paid for. Especially if you’re the sort of artist who finds herself questioning the career choices she has made to the extent that she has taken another year off from her teaching work for the second time in the past three years. (Yep, it me.)

And herein lies the dilemma of whether to delete my old, biggish Instagram account completely or not. 

Am I throwing away a lucrative money-making opportunity in a line of work I quite enjoy doing? (My husband thinks so.)

Am I throwing away possible career opportunities? (Oh, to be a published writer! Or a small business social media manager!)

Am I throwing away something that could help me prove my social media and photography skills in case I find myself working in another industry some day? (My friend who works in finance and recently found herself looking for new job opportunities thinks so.)

I remain undecided and find myself pondering on moral implications here.

Meanwhile, back in August, I made my small private Instagram account public only to see if it would have an effect on my creativity, and it does. I feel more whole when I’m taking photos and challenging myself with this form of art daily, it sparks joy in me, so it must have some value for me I figure.

I also feel I’ve made new friends, at least I consider them that, since making my account public. Having such a small number of followers really does give you an opportunity for real connection, and I need that in my life. Having lived in this tiny town for three years now, and not yet having found very many like-minded friends, and starting to question whether such people even exist — it feels wonderful to find that somewhere in the world they do. The comfort of posting a picture of an empty old house next door and then having people, somewhere in the world, telling you they’d move into it just to be your neighbour — I tell you, it gives you hope, and a sense of belonging in this world, just to know there are people out there who share your values and are willing to share their time with you.

So there are positive aspects to growth as well: the possibility of finding more kindred spirits, and spreading goodness and grace and love in this world gone crazy, fills me with warmth.

And yet. After listening to an episode of yet another simple living podcast earlier this week, I find myself questioning whether the time I’m spending online is limiting my opportunities of actual connection with people I could be spending time face to face with. (Is online connection actual? The jury’s out on that it seems.) Could and/or should I be looking for a sense of community and belonging somewhere closer to me? Would I find it?

The irony of listening to a podcast by a well-known blogger & author of books (written because of being well-known blogger) who is now urging me to spend less time online and on social media is not lost on me, and should be lost on no one. These slow living experts telling me to spend less time on the internet while they make their money by selling us online courses, well, I’m starting to find them hilarious. I find myself chuckling when I write, as the reason why I’m unsubscribing from yet another slow living mailing list, “Because I’m decluttering my inbox”. I think that making your money preaching slow living online, then urging people not to hang out on social media, is complete bollocks and one of the reasons why our current relationship with social media is so mixed. It’s true for me at least, and I suspect to many more.

So for now, I’m rejoicing in the connection I feel, in having a creative outlet. I try not to focus on numbers, not those of likes nor my following, but it is nice to feel my work is appreciated, that someone likes what I do. It’s nice to know there are people in this world who see the world with eyes similar to mine, even if they remain few and far between in real life. It’s nice to know that something you said or did made someone happy. But for me, the most wonderful thing on my small account is that it allows me to be authentically myself and do the kind of artistic work I want to do — who cares about numbers when they’re happy, right?

Last night, showing my Instagram photos to my husband, I pointed to him: look, I’ve got this much followers now, after making my account public. And he said to me, very matter-of-factly, but not like he was scolding or anything: “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

And so here I find myself, talking about talking about Instagram, and that is so very meta I can’t quite comprehend it even, and it’s given me a headache because I’ve been staring at my screen so long and forgotten to eat while staring, so kudos to you Facebook, I guess. I’m not sure if I’m missing the point I was making or if indeed there was a point I was making at some point, but here I am, writing. At the very least, I hope this writing helps, myself obviously, but maybe someone out there too. Because you know, Instagram can be an opportunity for growth, in the personal sense of the word as well.