Your Instagram Will Never Be Authentic
If you are an Instagram user, you are an artist. Like Warhol, Plath, or Kahlo, you create content and share it with the world with your consent. No one is forcing you to post your iced vanilla latte. No one is pressuring you to post that selfie showcasing your new purple hair. No one is telling you to confess your love for your partner via overly-cheesy collage either. But you did it anyways because you wanted to. You are expressing yourself just like Picasso did 100 years ago. You are an artist, whether you like it or not.
The beauty of it is you get to choose what you post and you get to create your own virtual image, just like artists get to choose which paintings they showcase and poets get to choose which poems they publish.
Art imitates life, right? (Life imitates art, too, but we’ll get to that later.) Every artist uses a different medium to express their feelings and their personal experiences. That all seems pretty ‘authentic’ to me. However, you can only be genuine to an extent as an artist. (or an instagrammer)
Sometimes, I see someones Instagram feed and I just think, “Oh my LAAAAWD. You have got to be kidding me.” Everything seems so forced. Your life isn’t a feed, you know? Everyone is a complicated person with a versatile, inconsistent life. There is no way on earth everything you encounter is the same monochromatic tone. Unless you have a permanent white background attached to your back and the Valencia filter tattooed to your face, your pictures probably aren’t an accurate depiction of what your life really is.
In a realer sense, are any of our Instagram’s authentic in the first place? Personally, I don’t lie on the gram. I don’t edit my pictures excessively. I don’t make my life seem any different than it really is. So, there you have it. All of my photos and captions are about my life and my experiences, and I’m sure most of you can say the same.
But then I really think about it…none of my pictures are candid. I sugarcoat things a lot. I don’t showcase every part of my life, only the parts I want to show. I’ll Instagram a picture where I have a cute manicure although my nails are bare 95% of the time. I’ll Instagram a picture of my glamorous workspace although my mattress is currently on the floor and I have to take the bus all the time. I’ll upload a super positive quote drawn in quirky calligraphy although I was crying my eyes out the night before. You don’t see me snapping pictures of my dingy mattress or my terrible experiences on public transit. And you sure as hell don’t see me posting boomerangs of mascara running down my face.
Is everything I post authentic? Yes. But the fact that I’m hiding key components of my life encourages me to put the more darker experiences in my art. My instagram may not be 100% authentic, but it encourages me to be a better artist and writer.
Growing up, I always had this fantasy of being a famous poet. I wanted children in classrooms to analyze my life just by reading my words. I wanted scholars to vicariously debate back and forth about what I really meant on page 27, line 6. I loved that wordsmiths had that power over so many generations and I wanted to be apart of that. These are private people who would write about their life. That’s it. These poets never confirmed their relationships, their mental state, or their philosophies…but scholars will tell you it’s all in the work. You can even see that for yourself.
That’s what I try to do with my social media. When I die, I want scholars to be able to go through my work and all of my social accounts and be able to tell a story from that. But if what you’re posting isn’t authentic, how will they do that? Your story is important, no matter how big your following is.
Our art is an imitation of our life, but Instagram has made life an imitation of our art. At least according to this study by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Apparently, taking photos of your experiences and sharing them can actually be more enjoyable. Nowadays, we hear people describe things as “instagrammable,” usually meaning it is aesthetically pleasing and tells some sort of story. Instagram has made us all artists, regardless of how you use it. We care about how things look now. We care about aesthetics, vibes, energies, details…even more than we used to.
Sometimes I wonder…if it weren’t for Instagram, would we care about the visual presentation of our food so much? Would we make getting a selfie with celebrities our first priority when meeting them? Would we put on a full face of makeup each and every day? Would Cupcake ATMS, rainbow grilled cheeses, and Mac n Cheetos even exist? Maybe not, but paying attention to those details adds enthusiasm to our life.
Your Instagram will never be completely authentic and I think that’s okay. The whole point of being an artist is choosing the messages you want to share with the world and creating your own image. You don’t have to tell them your entire life story, but the pages you do share with them should be from the soul. Even if it is sugarcoated and edited.
