I Was Born on a Sunday
And I'm leaving Instagram on a Sunday
I’ve been on the internet in one way or another since I was five (so think… 23 years and counting). I started with simple websites featuring five graphic buttons that each led to a game, then progressed to websites like stupid.com, where I played flash games about fattening up pigs until they exploded. I joined neopets in 2003, but mainly used the forums to roleplay as a moody teen or a half-wolf/half-humanoid creature (I still have my account! Add me, lbean1, but plz don’t shame me for forgetting to feed my pets). Later, I discovered Kiddonet, a platform that mixed flash games, comics, and forums, where I could create my profile and interact with others. You could create your very own profile, one that could be clicked into from a forum and which would open a new, tiny window with hardcoded formatting. Mine had a picture of me. The date of my first kiss. Maybe some xD xDs. Then, I moved on to Matmice, where I built my own fan pages using HTML coding. As I grew older, I joined MySpace, Facebook, and Instagram, each serving a different purpose in my online life. On these websites, I was suddenly without anonymity. On Myspace, I publicly announced my eight favorite friends. On Facebook, I shared every moment of my life pretty much as it was happening. And on Instagram, I learned to create the me that you know online today.
Above: Me before my very first ~~teenage party~~ sitting at my beloved bedroom desktop computer
As I entered young adulthood, I realized that the websites and apps I frequented began to exploit people like me who grew up online, overconfident in our ability to control our digital worlds and how we felt about them. Instagram, in particular, made me feel like I was curating myself, but in reality, it was curating me. It dictated which pages I saw, connected me only with those it deemed worthwhile (and only if it also deemed me worthwhile), and had the power to take everything away in an instant.
Above: An image of my high school best friend and I. People on campus described our online aesthetic as “soft grunge” (hello 2012 tumblr) and we leaned into it HARD.
On July 23rd, 2023, I’m leaving Instagram, not the internet.
I have always loved the internet, and platforms like Tumblr, which I used in high school, allowed me to connect with like-minded people and build a community. I enjoyed building websites and even had a domain in middle school called provokingdisaster.com, which I coded from scratch using MS Paint.
However, Instagram is not the same kind of internet. It does not encourage self-expression or genuine connections, and it is not a free and easy way to promote small businesses or projects. It asks that you express yourself in a way that it can sell.
Instead, Instagram is a prime example of surveillance capitalism, where it perpetuates the idea that one must always do MORE MORE MORE to achieve (perceived) organic success and earn admiration (when really, it’s just using what you’re doing to sell products back to you). It teaches you to sell, sell, sell, while hiding the endless hours it takes to create content that meets the latest and most profitable format. I despise the reels, the forced aspiration, and the impact that it’s had on my mental health.
When I took a month long break from Instagram in February, I was expecting to feel refreshed and creatively energized. Instead, I gained a heightened awareness of the constant shadow that Instagram casts on my personal practice. Even as I used my new non-scrolling oriented time to work on artistic endeavors, I worked to document them in an “instagram-friendly” manner for my return in March. I took aesthetically pleasing videos, photographed the most instagrammable parts of my painting process, and played obsessively with contrast and brightness. I even created a folder in my photos app called “back to insta” where I arranged the content I was collecting in a deliberate order. Y’all haven’t seen that content because when March came around and I jumped back into that folder, it made me feel sick to my stomach.
The worst part of all of this is the constant feeling that I'm in competition with my artist friends rather than being part of the same creative circle. The endless pursuit of likes, follows, and any interaction from my followers has led to challenges to my self-esteem and extreme jealousy. Instagram feeds off of this negativity, and I’ve decided that this is doing active harm. It doesn't feel good, it's not good for business, and it consumes too much of my time. As the algorithm orders MORE MORE MORE, my time to create becomes LESS LESS LESS.
The harm it causes is real. LINK. I cannot continue to utilize or stand behind a system that doesn’t align with my personal, creative, political, or professional values. Plot twist, that’s all of them! Instagram is oppositional to my WHOLE self. Why am I here? Why would I stay?
I want to feel connected to the world again, not in competition with it.
