I Suddenly Hate Instagram...

Apologies in advance for the rant!

I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a busy two weeks and actually forgot my WTF schedule and thought this edition was out next week and then realised I had three days to pull something together. I didn’t want to send out anything fashion-based that felt rushed or unfinished so I decided to write about a topic that’s been on my mind the past few weeks. So this week’s WTF is more of a think piece/rant from the depths of my brain…

It’s no secret that social media isn’t the healthiest hobby, but it’s hard not to be sucked in by at least one platform unless you’re 100% off grid. I stopped using Facebook years ago when my news feed became full of people I went to school with announcing their pregnancies - which would always send me into a slight existential crisis/spiral. Twitter was fun for a couple of years but then I ended up writing out tweets and deleting them before I even hit send, I couldn’t stop thinking that surely no one cared what I had to say? Especially nothing that could be summarised into 280 characters.

Therefore my platform of choice has always been Instagram because I’m 110% a visual learner - I love looking at photos and videos so to me it just made sense. In the name of research I embarrassingly went on my post likes and did the oldest - newest filter to see what year I joined. My first liked post is from June 2012, just over 11 years ago, which means I was 14 years old (!!!). Amongst these first few liked posts are a whole lot of galaxy print, Jeffrey Campbell heels, American Apparel disco pants and Kim-ye’s engagement. An era that I weirdly keep seeing pop back up on TikTok? I can’t have it come back around yet, I’m not ready.

Since then I have been posting consistently with no breaks. When I first signed up I was well into my Tumblr era which meant I was chained to my phone and laptop, staying up till the middle of the night re-blogging, posting and stalking celebrities. Then I started college and social media was such a ‘thing’ that I never considered not using it, same for uni, so it just became a permanent fixture in my life. I’ve never once considered taking a break or a ‘social media detox’, because it’s never made me feel particularly bad. I’ve always enjoyed being online, I loved playing Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel and Runescape for hours on end. I made Piczo website’s, nudged my friends on MSN and loved spending all my time on the shared family computer in the dining room. 

Like I said before, social media has never really made me feel that bad, I’ve always enjoyed it. Sure we all compare ourselves and our lives to what we see online but for some reason it never bothered me too much. This is up until recently. About two years ago I started posting my daily work outfits on Instagram more consistently and a few collaborations appeared in my inbox. One that I accepted actually blew up a tiny bit which led to me gaining probably half or more of the followers I have now, it all happened insanely quickly. As someone who loves clothes this was obviously super exciting and I definitely got swept up in it all, shamefully accepting gifting for things I didn’t necessarily want or need, just because it felt so validating that brands I knew of wanted to work with me. 

Skims for example - probably the biggest collaboration I was offered within the first six months of ‘influencing’, it was December 2021. I remember squealing at my phone because I couldn’t believe it when I read the email, I obviously immediately accepted the proposal. When the pieces arrived I sadly didn’t love them on me as much as I thought I would but I’d already said yes and was obligated to post. I remember stupidly leaving it till the last minute and getting my boyfriend to take photos for me. I’d woken up having such a low confidence day and hated every single photo we took, I ended up basically having a meltdown and crying all afternoon because I felt so insecure and like I wasn’t ever going to create any “good-enough” content. This was my first personal experience of the negative affects of social media. After that I decided not to accept work that I felt I wouldn’t be able to create authentic and confident content for, even if it was a big brand.

Since then I’ve kept that promise to myself and as a result haven’t had a moment quite as bad as that one. But I do think not long after that, I started slowly falling out of love with being an ‘influencer’. In full transparency - throughout the past 18 months or so I have been having some serious self confidence, anxiety and depression issues which I’m on medication for and trying to work through! But when you’re not feeling your best self it can be so easy to criticise everything and anything you do/wear etc etc.

Trying to navigate those feelings while also accepting brand deals or collaborations is so tricky. I’ve definitely stopped posting as many pictures of myself or my outfits and focused more on things I enjoy visually or items of clothing - not necessarily on my body. But I have sadly gotten to a point where I do find it quite difficult to have a picture of me taken and not pick apart every detail of myself that I don’t like (which I do now realise is due to constantly comparing myself to others online). Because I’m not posting myself so much anymore a lot of the collaboration opportunities have sort of dried up - which is ok because I don’t know how confident I’d be in working on them anyway ATM. 

I definitely love a good un-serious story, but since I haven’t been really focusing on my main feed posts as much, I’ve slowly started to care less about the whole app in general. Even when I started not posting myself as much, I still absolutely loved absorbing everyone else’s content, but even that joy has faded away. It’s become increasingly difficult to not compare every aspect of your own life to other peoples when we’re consuming SO much content every day. I can’t fathom where my brain is storing all of these tiny, constant pieces of information.

I think I’ve reached a point where I have honestly given up and I think Instagram has given up on me. My posts reach barely even 10% of my followers, and my engagement has absolutely plummeted. So then it feels like why am I even posting into the void? Does anyone even care?! It feels like when I eventually gave up on Twitter because it was like I was just chatting shit into an empty black hole. It’s a seriously tough time for content creators with the constantly changing algorithm, who knows what it wants?!

So now I’ve slightly given up on posting, and I’ve realised that looking at Instagram every day is making me feel bad about myself. So why am I still bothering? For the first time ever, I’ve had a few people in my life thinking the exact same thing. Some of my friends have actually deleted the apps from their phone because they simply CBA anymore. I recently started a new routine with my boyfriend where we put our phones down at least an hour before bed and read, then we go to sleep without looking at a screen again. I have never slept so good! I’ve been waking up feeling more refreshed and rejuvenated than ever. Surely this means something?! Surely there’s a correlation there.

Don’t get me wrong I love posting on the WTF insta feed - all the meme’s and Pinterest pics and silly videos are basically just me spilling the contents of my brain out for you guys to enjoy. I simply post and then don’t really think about it again, and it feels great. But for my personal account, the love has just slightly faded away. Some of you may be feeling the same, or maybe not? I do think maybe if my own mental health was in a better place that I’d probably find it more enjoyable, and if I was the most confident person in the world I’d probably love it! But that just isn’t reality for most people.

As for Threads… I 110% do not have the time or energy to even begin to explore that. 

Let me know how you’re feeling about social media, are you giving up? Or do you love it more than ever? And sorry if this is all a bit TMI, I’ve gotta be real with you guys or I’ll go insane!!