Before the book writing and before this site, the first place I really started storytelling was on Instagram. And before Instagram I spurned all forms of social media. I thought Facebook was self-adulating, and Instagram was as well, but at least on Instagram you could post a pretty picture without a caption or a word. You could simply focus on the art of photography. And if you wanted to combine that art with a story or poem, all the better.
Putting stuff “out there” on social media felt like a risk but not as scary as sending your work off to a publisher, where you open yourself up to flat out rejection. On Insta you just wrote a little bit and hoped nobody would tell you that your words were garbagio. Fortunately, nobody did.
Only once did I get a hateful comment and that was from someone who had curiously said such kind things before. But when I posted something about my son’s baseball schedule one day, where we had him pull a baseball bat out of the back of my truck using the force, all to the Star Wars theme music, some stranger told me to “enjoy my stupid life.”
Well, I have. That video was pretty dope too and I enjoyed the heck out of that as well. (If you’re curious, check it out.)
But most of the time I just posted photos on Instagram, with stories or poems in the caption space, and I loved the simplicity of the format and the ease with which it gave people a chance to engage. It was the only bit of social media I understood, and I enjoyed it for quite some time. But yesterday I decided to quit it.
Lately—well, okay for a while now—social media has been overrun with AI, deep fakes and a lot of misinformation. With all the chaos in the world reflected on platforms like Instagram, it feels weird posting something about nature or writing, unless I want to get political. And maybe someday I will, but right now it feels like it would only accomplish one thing: distract me from my writing.
It also started feeling weird posting a 30 second video that was fun to make, but was really only intended to give a quick thrill of dopamine, when I really thought about it. What once felt fun to post was now making me feel bad as I thought about what I was contributing to. More attention deficit disorder? More brain rot? I suppose I wasn’t too much of a problem because I often received criticism from today’s youth that my reels are too long. Imagine that. A thirty second video, or God forbid, a minute and a half long video, is too long. I started shortening my videos for them, for a few weeks, but then realized: am I supposed to cater to them, or do I serve them better if I get them to slow down?
Truthfully, I think what I really want is for everybody to get off these platforms. Unrealistic, I know. But if as an adult, I’m supposed to serve as a model for my kids, I wondered what example I was setting by spending too much time on social media (and I wasn’t on it that much. Maybe thirty minutes a day, mostly to post). But at the end of the day, do I care about Instagram? No. Do I care about my kids? Yes. There is so much more to life, after all, and you can show that without posting pictures of every step of the journey.
Look, I don’t knock people for being on it. It’s fun. Addictive. Entertaining. But obviously not good for us. I don’t want to start and end my day by looking at it anymore. I’d prefer a walk around the block, or to read a book, or have a conversation with a loved one. Taking Instagram out of the equation removes one more thing that is standing in the way of good stuff like that. Stuff I don’t want to miss.
P.S. One final note about Instagram. Their welcome page says it’s the place to “Share everyday moments with your close friends.” Like Facebook, does anybody have that experience on Instagram anymore? The last day I used it, I saw one post from a friend, three from suggested accounts to follow, and three ads. Crap, crap, crap.