Kontextmaschine

22nd March 2023

Post reblogged from left unity with 485 notes

So, a thing about Instagram is that it is, in fact, the official networking app of yuppie creatives. Go to a gallery opening and no one is asking you for your phone number or, heaven forbid, for your Facebook profile in order to get in touch with you. The messaging side of it does get used.
But that possibly useful contact you met at the gallery opening isn’t going to DM you if they never think about you, right? (You’re not actually “friends” after that guarded, surface-level three-minute conversation, just pretending to be by mutual agreement.) Which I assume is the logic behind why every single real-person Instagram post I see seems calibrated to achieve one specific effect: to remind you that the poster exists.
And this is what I mean by people acting like Brands, because this is the very essence of what Brands do. It’s the entire purpose of advertising. It’s the colonisation of mental real estate as, like, an end in itself. Just get people to think about you and maybe associate you with a few key positive adjectives and it’ll pay off later.
That’s what makes Instagram so distinct and horrible to me. People post on Tumblr for unrestrained fun and for the love of the Discourse; on Facebook to scream their incommunicable pain and terror out to an uncaring universe; on Twitter to engage in pulse-pounding gladiatorial combat… and on Instagram to advertise. That last one isn’t something people should be doing in their general capacity as human beings. I don’t like looking at it.

Tagged: it's social media