Thoughts on Instagram (bad), Downpour (good), daffodils (unclear)
Hey all,
Well! It's March! How nice it is to be here.
BOOK REPORT
Although: the fact that it's March means my book comes out in a month. I have some copies sitting in the living room right now. Ridiculous, terrifying.
(You don't have to buy it but if you ARE going to then why not preorder? You should be able to do that basically wherever you normally buy books. It's pretty good, I promise.)
INSTAGRAM REPORT
Look, I came late to Instagram. I made an account last year because my editor told me I should: that book people have collectively decided to hang out on a social media service that requires its users to be well groomed and good at taking photos and to have thoughts that are fully expressible in 2200 characters. Baffling, yes.
When I joined Twitter I felt like I was coming to it a little late, but that was early 2009, and in retrospect: I really wasn't. It's just that I worked in games and my friends were early to every new website. Instead I was early enough that I was around for most of the decisions that led to Twitter becoming the weird teetering edifice it is today. The advent of the built-in "retweet"! The doubling of the character limit! The wonder that was "muting"! The genuine outrage we somehow felt when, in 2015, the "favourite" button (a star) became a "like" button (a heart), or possibly vice versa! You see faving something is meaningfully different from liking it, we collectively held, although it's hard to remember why. Twitter is very bad now but I saw the steps on the way and I guess I feel like I understand how it ended up the grotesque malformed thing that it is.
2023, on the other hand, is really late to come to Instagram. So I'm encountering every decision and quirk of its overbuilt city all at once, and it's like those bits of London that pretend to be public spaces but aren't. Buildings weirdly angled by the shapes of the things that came before them and some old legislation around sightlines. People trying to have picnics in soggy little corners of shadowed grass between half-empty skyscrapers. The incredible clarity with which this space was not made for people. The way Instagram mostly doesn't even let you post a link that people can click, and I guess clicking links hasn't been the internet's primary mode of interaction for a while now, endless scroll for all, but come on. Not sure what the lack of a clickable link analogises to: the absence of free public toilets, maybe? A small inconvenience that gives away the real nature of the space.
I do quite like it though. (I quite like some of the fake-public spaces too.) The main thing it shows me is (a) book promo by people I follow, and (b) interminable process videos by people I don't. These process videos always detail the accelerated making of some deeply underwhelming piece of art or craft. A stranger has painted a series of adequate ribbons on an old coffee table. Another stranger has covered a broken mug with tissue paper and swirls of acrylic paint and made it into a slightly cute pig. I know it only shows me these videos because I watch them through to the end; I always want to know what the thing will look like when it's done.
At least it's not Tiktok, which I used to use for learning Italian but then one afternoon it figured out that I'm susceptible to the disgusting splendour of blackhead extraction videos, and now I can never open it again.
DOWNPOUR REPORT
Today is the launch of Downpour! Downpour is an app from my friend v buckenham for making little games and jokes and websites on your phone.
You may recall my game Where's Madeleine, in which you try to find Madeleine, the slightly more beautiful of our two kittens; that's a Downpour game, and I made it in about forty minutes. Downpour is really good, I think, fun and charming and accessible, and it encourages people to make games out of photos and drawings and their own pets and everything around them: to collage together their world and art with little digital interactions. The games are playable in the app itself, or you can send them to friends to play in a web browser on their phone or desktop or wherever.
It's free to use - the business model is "people who really like it can pay money to upload more images etc". Here are some situations I think it would work great for:
You have a kid aged maybe 8+ who's interested in making games: this is a great way for them to try
You're an artist who wants to make something interactive that explores your work or a thought you've had or a little visual diary
You're a teacher or game developer running a workshop about making games and you want a way for participants to get started fast
You're having a nice day out and you want to find a way to record it that isn't just "ninety photos you'll never look at again"
You have a friend you want to send a small treat to, to let them know you saw something that reminded you of them: why not make them a Downpour?
You want to record a recipe or a set of directions or some other little how-to
It's an anti-Instagram, everything about it overflows with its desire to find people who are just thinging their things and thinking their thoughts in the world, and to give them an expressive and delightful tool to play with. Give it a go!
GARDEN REPORT
My overengineered planting schema has been RUINED because some supposedly "white" daffodils came up yellow.
I cannot overstate the devastation this has wreaked to my meticulous colour planning. My whole little garden is constructed around one trick: if you're not great at colour schemes, you can fake it by choosing one or two major colour categories, and just excluding them. I picked yellow and orange as my forbidden shades, and as a result the garden looks like it's well-informed and on purpose. So it's not just that the daffodils are in the wrong place: they are forbidden, ruinous.
But at the same time: oh my god, daffodils. I love them. They're so bright. Fuck you, past decisions, the daffodils stay.
Hope all's well with you, speak soon,
Holly