Goodbye Instagram!
There never was going to be that good moment to leave Instagram. Or rather, there have already been too many moments when I should have abandoned the site, and yet I didn’t: when it became clear to what extent Facebook was censoring artists, when they introduced their rules (“algorithms”) defining what I and others would see (or not see), when they flooded the site with videos copied from TikTok… The list goes on and on and on.
My original idea had been to set up accounts elsewhere and to see whether that was going well. Or rather to experiment and then to leave for sure (Zuckerberg showing up for Trump was the final straw). But last night, I had really had it. I had had an especially taxing day, and I quit the hell site.
I’d love to write that doing so felt good, but it didn’t. It didn’t feel good or bad. It was just the kind of feeling you experience when you finally ripp off the Band Aid for good. It was the right thing to do for me.
Whether or not more people will follow does not concern me. It’s not that I don’t care for other people (I do). It’s just that other people have their own ideas and thoughts and preferences. IG might still work for them. And that’s perfectly fine for me.
Honestly, I don’t think that there will be a replacement for Instagram in the way that Bluesky has now replaced Twitter for many people (most of the Bluesky effect was driven by the fact that journalists were really vocal about their moves).
In fact, I don’t think that I personally need another Instagram.
Spending time on Foto, an app that looks and works like the original Instagram, had me realize to what extent I had become used to all the distractions on IG: the endless scrolling past inane ads or TikTok videos or whatever else. Foto is just, well, photographs. It might not be the most appealing site, yet, especially given how few people post images; but it has promise.
(I’m not in charge of Foto, so please don’t email me with any concerns or questions you might have about the site. There’s literally nothing I can do about how the site is run, and I don’t know their plans, either.)
There’s also Pixelfed, but it doesn’t appear to be overly stable for me. I’m reluctant to invest time into figuring out whether I can solve the problems (maybe by moving to another server?): I don’t have that much spare time, and I want to invest it wisely. Spending time on tech problems is not time spent wisely for me any longer.
Rather reluctantly, I’m also on Bluesky. Bluesky is like Twitter without the Nazis. I don’t really know whether I need such a social-media site. Initially, I picked a random ID and left off my name (kudos to people who will know the reference). Foolishly, I later engaged with someone and blew my cover. So if you now look for me, you will find me. Whether or not I will stay I don’t know. I didn’t install Bluesky on my phone so I will not engage with it after hours. As I noted, it’s like Twitter without the Nazis. But it’s not the early Twitter, a site that was filled with fun and creativity.
In the end, it might just come down to CPhMag.com and this Mailing List for me. I don’t know, yet; but I have the feeling that this is all I need. Everything else might just create too many bad habits. For me, disengaging with Instagram isn’t just cutting away a site run by truly bad people, it’s also trying to cut away bad habits that are actively promoted there.
Anyway, there’s a new documentary out that alleges that one of the most famous photographs wasn’t taken by the person listed in photo-history books:
Officially titled The Terror of War, the image, taken on 8 June 1972, depicts a naked nine-year-old girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc as she and several crying, burned children flee a napalm attack in the South Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng. The AP and Ut have long maintained that Ut, then 21 years old, took the photo, which earned him a Pulitzer prize, photojournalist fame and a distinguished career until his retirement from the AP in 2017.
But The Stringer presents a different story: that the iconic photograph was actually taken by another photographer on the scene that day: Nguyen Thành Nghe, a Vietnamese driver for NBC who sold his photos to the AP as a freelancer, or “stringer”.
As you can imagine, there is a lot of bad blood, and where there is blood, there are sharks (lawyers), too. We’ll see how this develops.
And that’s it for today! Please remember to practice little, random acts of kindness! Everyone of them will make a big difference.
As always thank you for reading!
— Jörg