Monday, November 11, 2013

An Ode To Instagram

So, thus far on my new work-related blog, I've had three posts. One is arguably work-related and the other two not so much.

But I realized something awesome about Instagram the other day and wanted to share, and since I at least nominally research and write on new media for a living, I don't think it's too far off the mark to post it here as well as my Super-Secret Blog of Feelings and Secrets.

As if it wasn't clear from my original post on this blog, I have a pretty ambivalent relationship with social media. I used MySpace for awhile, but I was never quite sure what it was for besides streaming other people's music. I started using Facebook because my friend Toria signed me up using my laptop while I was in the bathroom one day at work. I started using Twitter because it was required for a class. I started using Foursquare because I needed another example of digital storytelling to talk about in my dissertation. I started using Google+ because I was just curious if it was actually better than Facebook.*

In short, I didn't really start using any of these services for what they were meant for; namely, for socializing. Like a dog with a type of food he's never encountered before, I've always been content to just take a lick here and there and then spit the thing back out, because, frankly, the food I usually eat has always been good enough.** I started researching and writing on Americans' use of social media not because I was a huge fan, but because it was so fascinating to me that we could collectively become obsessed with a form of expression that was simultaneously so full of promise and yet so empty in execution.

I post a lot on Facebook, but it feels fairly pointless, unless I'm sharing news that I know will interest or entertain someone specific. I post a lot on Twitter, but it's the internet equivalent of having "conversations" with the colleagues that speed past my open door en route to their class: it's nice for a quip or shout-out here or there, but ultimately not much beyond that. I still use Foursquare from time to time, but only because it's fun from a gaming perspective: I like earning new badges and mayorships in that shallow Unlock Steam Achievement way. If each Foursquare interaction took about a second longer, I'd probably stop using it entirely.

Instagram, though...Instagram is cool. I realized this the other day as I was waiting for one of those things you occasionally find yourself waiting for, like someone to call you back or your girlfriend to use the restaurant bathroom. During those little spaces nowadays, when you know you don't have enough time to Accomplish Something but there's also not enough time to Fall Into A Deep Reverie And Reflect On The Meaning Of Life, I usually pull out my phone and tool around. In this case, I went to my Instagram feed and started looking at the pictures posted recently by the people I follow. And I realized after about four pictures that it was just really awesome, interesting, and creative in a way that all those other social networks rarely are.

Part of it, of course, is the requirement that one uses visuality to express themselves on Instagram. There's a huge gap between posting "I ate veal tonight" on Facebook or Twitter and turning that written expression of mundane fact into poetry.*** However, even if you take the most soulless, robotlike photograph of your food and post it to Instagram, you're still making decisions about how to frame the photo, what light you're taking it in, the angle you're taking it at, etc., etc. You are forced, at the options screen, to make choices about the frame that goes around your picture, if you want a caption, if you want to apply a filter, and so on. Even if you opt out of all of these choices, that itself is a choice. It's a social media app that requires you to express yourself artistically and creatively, even if only in the smallest of ways, and for that I love it.

Of course, this also democratizes interesting content creation in the sense that you don't need to be able to describe your plate of veal like Whitman or Keats to make it interesting: visually, to me at least, it's really exciting to be able to actually see what other people I know find important in their lives. Written language is a fun tool to play with, but not everybody likes to play with it. Not everybody is comfortable enough using it to play with it. A neat photo on Instagram is just a click away (a few more if you want to apply the Amaro filter first, which you should probably do).

There hasn't been a single time over the last year or so that I've checked my Instagram feed that I haven't found something that struck me as a legitimate piece of point-and-click art. I'm lucky if that happens once a week or three on Facebook or Twitter. Other social media networks feel a bit like I'm living on a street with everyone I know and we all leave our curtains open and our windows open and talk really loudly, even when we're just talking to ourselves. Instagram, instead, feels a little bit like those times in my undergrad Creative Writing classes when we'd all write some super-sloppy, semi-outrageous, but totally earnest poem and read it out loud to the rest of the class. There was always something a little bit silly about everyone's poem (including your own), but the fact that everyone was sharing made it so everyone deserved to be taken seriously.

I think this happens with Instagram at least in part because the platform forces you to share in this way if you choose to use it at all, but I think I'm okay with that.

* It is, but nobody uses it, so it's sort of a hollow victory.
** This is a strained metaphor, but it's also happening on the carpet in front of me right now, so it's what came to mind.
***And here I mean lowercase-"p" poetry, not uppercase-"P" Poetry.

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