
Instagram has turned us against ourselves - swlkr
https://streaking.app/posts/instagram-has-turned-us-against-ourselves-4be2eca50211
======
TACIXAT
Set your profile to private and stop giving a shit about engagement. If you're
selling something, great, make a themed profile and increase your follower
count with as many #hashtags as you can cram into that comment section. If
you're using it socially, post about your life and chill out on measures of
popularity.

I do strongly agree with the idea that we need a better way to reach out to
our friends. Posting a photo and getting likes isn't staying in touch. It's
fine for acquaintances, but you should talk to the people you care about, not
just check up on their recent posts.

~~~
ngngngng
I recently deleted facebook and instagram in an effort to take back my
privacy. I really miss the stories feature on instagram. Stories don't have a
concept of engagement besides views. People actually post what they're doing
throughout the day in small, bite size pieces. I think it's a fantastic way to
keep up with people.

~~~
etrautmann
Interesting - I see this less as "keeping up with people" and more voyeurism.
It feels odd to me when I see someone who I haven't talked to in a while but I
know all about what they've been doing/etc.

~~~
thatoneuser
Eh idk. I’d say that it’s more like going to a play to watch an old
acquaintance perform while sitting in the way back where they can’t see. Is
that voyeurism? Because on social media, typically the idea is people opt to
display their lives so that they can be observed. Idk for me voyeurism implies
more of a one sided observation where the observed isn’t really aware or
intending.

------
Puer
I don't care about how many likes or how many followers I get. I use Instagram
to share my photography which is my hobby. I only follow my friends and people
whose posts I genuinely want to see. Through Instagram I've been able to
connect with other likeminded photographers that inspire me with their work
and support me in mine. I also find it a great way to keep up with old friends
that never used Facebook in the same way.

If your happiness is dependent on the attention you receive on these social
media apps, there are likely deeper problems that you should address beyond
simply deleting the app and telling everyone else who uses it to do the same.

There's a certain irony to all of these posts that have been cropping up
lately on how "I deleted (insert social media service here) and it made me
happier". Many of these posts cite the cessation of the race for validation as
the reason for their increase in happiness. If you weren't expecting the same
validation that you got from the service you just left, would you have really
made the post? Couldn't you have simply just quit and be done with it?
Deleting Instagram may temporarily improve your mental health, but it isn't a
cure for a deeper underlying problem.

~~~
dingaling
> I use Instagram to share my photography which is my hobby.

But Instagram has horrific resizing and compression algorithms that make good
DSLR photos look like artifacted junk. They're designed to plaster over the
smudgy quality of phone photos and when you feed them a 20MB 100% JPEG it all
falls apart.

I realised this when IG photos from my ancient 350D beater were less
artifacted than photos from the 1Ds3...

And they do something to colours, red-shifting blues to purples; presumably
for more _POP_ on mobiles.

You'd be better using a proper gallery site.

~~~
kkarakk
that no one would visit

------
save_ferris
I feel this way about social media in general.

I completely deleted all of my social media profiles about three years ago. A
few weeks back, I created an entirely new twitter account because I've been
giving more software talks lately and I've noticed that I'm the only speaker
without a twitter handle.

But I find myself falling into the engagement trap constantly, since I still
have a tiny following. In trying to think "what should I tweet that will get
likes?", I'm already conditioning myself to pursue engagement.

The thought of getting my twitter following back to what it was only a few
years ago seems really daunting, and I'm already put off by the thought a few
weeks in.

~~~
Apocryphon
"I'm already conditioning myself to pursue engagement."

We are all brand managers now.

~~~
swlkr
You could say we are all influencers now

------
Raphmedia
> People are reduced to a single identity

You can have multiple accounts and the Instagram UI makes it easy to switch.
You can click the name of the account and a drop down appears. You then click
the account you want to use and it immediately switches you without any
hassles.

Most people I know (18-28 demographic) have several accounts.

I own a reptile and my main account is reptile posting along with some nature
photos taken from the odd times I go on hikes. This account is my "nature
photography" account. It's the one I use to enjoy the gamification part of
Instagram. I enjoy hunting for likes and adjust the photos I post there based
on reception.

The second account is a sh*tposting account that is private and is filled with
inside jokes. This account is only followed by close friends.

My third account is my family account. It's filled with family photos and my
mom and aunts follow it. This account is also private.

My fourth account is my developer / workplace account and has no photos. It is
temporary because it is registered using the corporate email account and when
I change jobs, I create it again from scratch.

~~~
snarf21
Most kids I know have one or more _finsta_ accounts plus a "real" one that
they let their family follow.

~~~
Raphmedia
Exactly. It's so common that there's even lingo around it. Finsta and Rinsta.
Fake instagram account / real instagram account.

~~~
ct0
Frame or Fake?

~~~
Raphmedia
Autocorrect. Thanks, caught it in time to edit.

------
borkt
My dopamine response system has apparently never bought into the idea that
likes actually determine my value in any way. I seem just use them to see what
specific friends or colleagues are interested in and invite them for a
specific activity. Vegetarian? Invite them for pizza not a BBQ. Outdoorsy? See
if they want to go skiing or hiking some time. Based on what I see and hear I
feel pretty lucky.

~~~
ImaCake
If you are actually using likes as useful data points for meaningful action
you are way ahead of most people. To me, and I imagine many others, likes are
just a passive acknowledgement of popularity with only wafer thin meaning. Not
doing anything with those likes is part of what makes them such a problem and
one of many reasons I avoid social media.

------
leroy_masochist
Counterpoint: IG allows you to curate an online photo album about yourself and
either broadcast it to the world or distribute it to a permissioned list, and
this has significant value for many people.

It also has intrinsic negative value for many, in the way outlined by the
author (and also described by the seminal Wait but Why post [0]). People see
their friends posting snapshots of their nominally awesome lives and feel
pressure to keep up, and basically everyone makes each other more miserable by
generating FOMO in others, etc.

I'm not saying that this _sehnsucht_ -generation isn't real, or that it
doesn't mess some people up -- it is and it does. But if we're judging IG on
its overall merits the downside has to be weighed against the fact that IG
helps people learn about each other through a pretty elegant interface --
right?

Also, the author seems to be eliding the differences between a) best practices
for building and monetizing an IG following as an influencer with a public-
facing account and b) the general stress of 'keeping up with' your college
classmates:

> We can talk about free or paid apps, ads or donations, we can talk about
> tipping and buy me a coffee, or patreon subscriptions. We can talk about all
> of that, or we can get to the heart of what really matters. Things that are
> easy to do, aren't always the best things for us.

By my reading, in this passage he is conflating the measures IG influencers
take to help themselves make money on Instagram with the stress and angst that
IG users who are not trying to make a living off of IG posts feel with respect
to keeping up with their high school classmates and whatnot. Seems like a
pretty clear category-mistake to me.

[0]: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-
are-...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-
unhappy.html)

~~~
swlkr
I've never heard of waitbutwhy, wow this site is amazing.

You're right. I was conflating influencers together with regular users.

I guess I don't usually separate them when I rant about IG, I rant about it
quite a bit. It would be nice if it was all IG ads and regular users or if
influencers were marked as such… maybe.

------
reading-at-work
I see the reasoning, but I don't think it's necessarily true. Look at someone
like Joe Rogan, who has millions of followers but a fairly eclectic mix of
content and no one thing that defines what he does (interviewer, commentator,
hiker, traveler, hunter, MMA enthusiast, fitness and "nutrition" advocate,
etc).

Come to think of it, most of the famous people I follow post random content as
well, like musician Ola Englund posting funny videos of his kids or UFC
fighter Derrick Lewis posting almost nothing UFC or fighting related. If
anything, the unexpected content makes a person MORE worth following because
it's not just generic self-promotion the whole time.

It's a mixed bag, and the author definitely has some warrant for concern, but
I think it's overblown.

~~~
swlkr
I've noticed this too, like pewdiepie on youtube, similar situation. Of course
he also spent years as the "guy who streams himself playing games"

------
emsal
There's something really unsettling about the way this article casually drops
a Ted Kaczynski reference without, you know, even doing so much as alluding to
the messed-up things that he did. There are probably better examples of people
to use, right?

~~~
swlkr
Yeah you're right, definitely not a great person, but I used the reference
because he turned out to be right about the negative effects of "over-
socialization"

------
itslennysfault
If you are "working on your personal brand" or whatever... sure. I just post
pictures of stuff I do, and my friends see it. The end. I don't care at all
about "getting engagements"

------
dpflan
Did anyone notice the website for this post? The author of this post seems to
have created the site too:

\-- [https://streaking.app/about](https://streaking.app/about)

\-- [https://streaking.app/@sean](https://streaking.app/@sean)

This idea of tracking streaks is good; is there a meta-service/platform for
monitoring "streaks" of "anything"?

~~~
cedricium
Two big services in the indie-maker space are:

\-- Makerlog (free): [https://getmakerlog.com/](https://getmakerlog.com/)

\-- WIP (paid): [https://wip.chat/](https://wip.chat/)

Both allow you to record what progress you've made while also tracking the
number of days in a row you've been delivering.

------
latexr
> deleting accounts and ostracizing yourself socially

I read this as the former implying the latter, and was reminded of a tweet by
Mike Monteiro that was something like[1]:

> I’ve seen excuses from people who say they want to leave Facebook but can’t
> that would make heroin addicts blush

[1]: He was part of DeactiDay, so the account and tweet are no longer
available.

------
saurik
When I click this link I am "turned against myself" by what seems like an
automatic history.back(). Is this a metaphor? (edit: A half hour later and it
is still doing this for me despite other people seemingly commenting on the
content of an article. I am using iOS 10.)

~~~
swlkr
Oh interesting… there shouldn't be anything like that there. In fact, it
should work with js disabled entirely, assuming js is the culprit here. For
what it's worth, I don't have access to iOS 10, but I did try it on Safari in
the latest iOS and had no issue, sorry I can't help more

------
Touche
If the author is reading HN, please add something like this:

    
    
      p { line-height: 25px; }
    

The text is hard to read from being so bunched together.

~~~
swlkr
I am reading this, and yes I will do that! Thanks for letting me know

