You said it... I feel it too. The magic connection is gone, and I blame the algorithm. If I saw even half of my friends' posts and no ads or suggested follows, I would be back all in.
I sign onto Instagram every Friday evening and scroll for an hour or so, mainly stopping on cat videos and such.
Rarely do I see anything that comes from the many beautiful people I follow. Is it because they’re gone? Maybe by now, yes. But back when I first realized I wasn’t seeing any of them hardly ever anymore, it wasn’t because they were gone. No, they were still ‘there’, they were still posting, but it was as if they were all locked behind some kind of nebulous wall, which I came to understand as algorithm. And I hate it. It’s sad.
I think you (and the handful of others like you that I met here a decade ago, all of which you know) are the only reason I can’t quite let Instagram go. Where would we see each other? I keep coming back because I still want this window into your families lives, even though I rarely share mine anymore. You all meant so very much to me. I’m certainly not there for the health accounts, or pretty well kept house accounts that make feel inept. It’s just those same old friendships, and the nicely composed decade long photo album of our lives that I cling to.
Yesss. I still scroll it but hardly ever post. I feels like everyone is pushing a product and that’s fine, but I’m less engaged. And I feel like the expectation is pretty, edited, filtered photos which take more time to post and it’s a turn off for me. I enjoy checking it out for what it is now, but it’s not the place of meeting and connecting with people that it used to be
I'm so glad you're writing here!! I Left Instagram very slowly. The less I used it the more I realized it wasn't serving the function in my life that it had been when I first joined. And I realized that for me, right now, I need to be all in in my real life as much as I can. And Instagram was no longer helping me do that. I wonder if I'll ever go back. I wonder if it will shift again more to what it was at the beginning someday...
P.S. I agree, Substack does feel like the blogs of yore. Hopefully the powers that be don’t decide to F it up too, like decide everything has to have a paywall, etc.
You said it... I feel it too. The magic connection is gone, and I blame the algorithm. If I saw even half of my friends' posts and no ads or suggested follows, I would be back all in.
I sign onto Instagram every Friday evening and scroll for an hour or so, mainly stopping on cat videos and such.
Rarely do I see anything that comes from the many beautiful people I follow. Is it because they’re gone? Maybe by now, yes. But back when I first realized I wasn’t seeing any of them hardly ever anymore, it wasn’t because they were gone. No, they were still ‘there’, they were still posting, but it was as if they were all locked behind some kind of nebulous wall, which I came to understand as algorithm. And I hate it. It’s sad.
I think you (and the handful of others like you that I met here a decade ago, all of which you know) are the only reason I can’t quite let Instagram go. Where would we see each other? I keep coming back because I still want this window into your families lives, even though I rarely share mine anymore. You all meant so very much to me. I’m certainly not there for the health accounts, or pretty well kept house accounts that make feel inept. It’s just those same old friendships, and the nicely composed decade long photo album of our lives that I cling to.
Yesss. I still scroll it but hardly ever post. I feels like everyone is pushing a product and that’s fine, but I’m less engaged. And I feel like the expectation is pretty, edited, filtered photos which take more time to post and it’s a turn off for me. I enjoy checking it out for what it is now, but it’s not the place of meeting and connecting with people that it used to be
I'm so glad you're writing here!! I Left Instagram very slowly. The less I used it the more I realized it wasn't serving the function in my life that it had been when I first joined. And I realized that for me, right now, I need to be all in in my real life as much as I can. And Instagram was no longer helping me do that. I wonder if I'll ever go back. I wonder if it will shift again more to what it was at the beginning someday...
P.S. I agree, Substack does feel like the blogs of yore. Hopefully the powers that be don’t decide to F it up too, like decide everything has to have a paywall, etc.