Confessions of an ex-Instagrammer
I know, I know what you are thinking
Not again, not another post on redemption from social media binging and digital detox. But hear me out before you dismiss my post into the obscurity of the abundance of similar posts.
I have always been someone who has stayed socially anonymous both in the physical and more so in the digital space. Things however took a turn in 2020. That's when I began my tryst with Instagram when the whole world went into lockdown. Soon I joined the scores of Indians crowding the internet with their #dalgonacoffee and #saree challenge.
It was during that period of uncertainty and loss that I realized why social media had become so wildly popular. It basically tapped into a human being’s innate desire.
Desire to be seen
Desire to be heard
The penultimate desire to be remembered.
For common masses like me who have no accomplishments worth remembering after, social media is a place where we can be remembered for the simplest things we did. It was a way to immortalize our tardy lives onto servers sitting thousands of miles away from us.
After close to 20 months of Instagramming, all the way from old travel pictures of mine under tags like #nostalgia #outdoor to new indoor pictures of me acrobatically bending to yoga, I finally called it quits, and here’s the reason why
The illusion of a solo visitor
Prior to the advent of Instagram, I used to not mind sharing my photo space with other fellow tourists, signposts, or even stray cows ( a common occurrence in India) for that matter. After all, it's a tourist spot.
It is content like #followmeto and similar photo dumps from other travel influencers that planted the seed for creating an illusion of a solo visitor. With no hint of any other human crouching in the background of one’s photo, it gave a sort of cinematic and enigmatic touch to it. As if the place was discovered by this traveler.
It is in a similar pursuit of capturing a cinematic moment that I almost ruined a hike to the Napali Coast. It was a strenuous, slippery hike amidst clouds pouring down that day. Right at the onset of the hike, I was focused on beating the crowds to get to those picturesque vista points whose pictures I had seen on Instagram. My desire to recreate that illusion of a solo visitor took precedence over truly enjoying the journey. We did eventually manage to be the first ones to reach our destination- Hakapi Falls. The place was ours, solely ours. It was surreal, akin to the last scene from Jurassic Park where the helicopter is seen lifting up against the backdrop of that waterfall cascading down a cliff nestled in thick vegetation. Before I even took a moment to soak in that magnificent view, I found myself pulling out my phone. That marked the biggest fight I ever had with my simple-natured, nature-loving, and social-media-abstaining husband.
A window to the evil eye or what we call #Nazar
Instagram according to my mother is a window for everybody to cast an evil eye(Nazar) on everybody else.
Don’t ever let the world know of your prosperity and happiness
she would warn.
I for one don’t believe in the power of the evil eye. Yes people feel jealous and they tend to harbor spite but if there were so much power in this evil eye then our celebrities would have long perished. No, Instagram did not change my perception about the evil eye but it did show me how evil my eye could get.
I started following this influencer couple that trotted around the globe making videos on unique stories from different countries. They also often capitalized on their own relationship by posting video stories on how they met, how many times they broke up, and how despite their polarizingly different ideologies they continue to love each other. Their relationship made no sense to me. The woman in question here didn’t want kids and didn’t believe in the institution of marriage whereas the man did. She believed in living a life while he believed in working till you dropped dead. Amidst the alienation that came with being locked down and the constant pandemic-driven fear of death of a loved one looming large, I simply hated seeing this couple simper around the world in business classes and complain about the annoying quarantine rules sitting in their fancy five-star hotels. I woke up every morning secretly hoping to see if their flight got canceled or if either of them tested positive, or worse if they had broken up.
On several occasions, I had come really close to typing down the mean commentary running in my head. That's when I realized it was time to pull the plug on Instagram.
Having successfully completed 20 months of Instagram-free life here is my take
Self-awareness is key
Before creating an account on a platform that has such immense potential to play with one’s psych it’s absolutely essential to ask the question, why do I need an Instagram account
Is it purely to generate dopamine in your head
Is it to stay connected and updated on the lives of acquaintances
Is it to make money
Or is it just FOMO
In hindsight, deactivating Instagram has done more good than I had expected it to. My former reflex to automatically open Insta every time my hands reached my phone for some dopamine, was replaced with opening Kindle or opening market watch and Nerdwallet. I finished off several books that were catching digital dust sitting in my Kindle. On the way back to sanity I also picked up an interest in the stock market which helped me make a few dollars that I never in a million years would have made on Instagram.
Cut to the present, I have gained ample immunity from the temptation to go back on Insta. As a matter of fact, I had almost even forgotten about the annoying aforementioned influencer couple, till a friend of mine showed me their latest video announcing their breakup !! As I was watching their breakup video which had all the cringe ass elements like background music, special effects and some theatrics, I couldn’t help but wonder if my mom had been right all along.
Perhaps #Nazar is true
