Platforms and possibilities
Digital art, made to look like paper, made to look like a rural landscape. But it’s not pretending to be anything it’s not. (Image by Hansuan Fabregas)
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Kate Lindsay wrote that Instagram is over.
And then, she promoted her article on TikTok.
The complaint boils down to this: Instagram, like Facebook, used to be a place that you could go to exchange photos with family and friends. Now, you can’t find the posts of people you know amidst the sea of algorithmically-generated content from strangers.
What’s funny is that you can still easily find the photos of your family and friends. They’re on Facebook. (At least, I think they are. I have the News Feed Eradicator installed so that I don’t have to see them.)
Also funny: It wasn’t so long ago that the narrative that dominated social media discourse was related to how unpleasant it was to engage with friends and family on these platforms.
Recently, I saw a post, on the Internet, expressing a dislike of the Internet. But the Internet is a very big place. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, you can go somewhere else in a click.
That doesn’t solve the problem of wanting to change an existing site, however. Or really, wanting to change it back to the way it used to be. But these giant platforms will do what they want to do, for their own purposes. Periodically, we all just migrate to the next one, like a prehistoric hunter-gatherer clan in a period of drought, looking for a good water source and abundant game.
What is it that we’re looking for on these social platforms, and on the Internet in general? Connection? Enrichment? Entertainment? In the absence of these, simply diversion?
You can satisfy these desires pretty easily online. However, the Internet is a place you can go not to just to consume, but to contribute. Kate Lindsay uses the term “performance” media, but I think that’s reductive.
Putting yourself out there isn’t necessarily about ego, being an extrovert, or wanting to be the center of attention.
It can be an act of generosity that gives the people who are looking for you a way to find you, regardless of what social platforms or communities are in vogue.
You don’t have to be a polished, finished product and you don’t have to have figured everything out. You can share whatever you have, wherever you are.
When I built my first website in 1995, it wasn’t about performance. It was about the magic of creating something and sharing it. I am grateful to have found my way back to that feeling many times over the years.
Back in 2011, it was novel and fun to share my crummy Instagram photos with a handful of other early adopters. When it stopped being novel and fun, I peaced out. But naturally, I found other places to connect and share. How could I not?
Getting attached to one specific place with one specific group of people, whether physical or virtual, is a very human thing. Summer camp, college, a particular subreddit — we get invested, and it’s painful when things change. It helps when we accept that such change is inevitable. In this way, we can evolve, too, instead of clinging to the way things used to be.
There are a few different ways to adapt. We can withdraw for a period of time. We can establish ourselves our own platform that we control, no matter how tiny. We can embrace what’s coming and lead others into the new. Or we can drift along, following the crowd.
Having been away from Instagram for years — and away from Twitter for even more years — I have no emotions about what’s happening in those places. Ironically, this gives me an opportunity to go in and check things out, just for fun.
I won’t expect to see posts from my friends and family. I won’t expect to go viral with my own posts. But maybe I’ll meet some new interesting people. And if not, I’ll keep looking. I know they’re out there.
