There is no version of me that does not end up deleting Instagram
The short story of why I deleted Instagram forever.
NOTE: We don't inhabit a fragmented reality. Nothing around us can be isolated from the catastrophic effects of the pandemic we're witnessing. All further posts on this blog will carry this caveat until there is some reasonable accountability established and substantial actions taken against the state's criminal abdication of responsibility.
If you prefer listening, you can listen to my narration of this post, here.
If you enjoy reading pieces like this, do consider subscribing to this newsletter to receive interesting posts like this straight into your inbox. I write about a range of issues from ideas, mental models, book reviews to policy analysis, law and technology etc. It’d be great to have you over!
This will be a short post.
I don't remember how many times I have deleted Instagram. I've done it so many times that it has become a running joke among my friends and family that I only delete it to come back later. And unfortunately that has been true all along. I've tried everything - temporarily disabling my account, deleting the app from my phone, permanently deleting the application. But no matter what I do, I always come back to it. My self discipline is a joke. Or hopefully, was.
Instagram possibly has the most potent network effect. Of all the times I have relapsed (It is an addiction. There is no other way to put it. The first step to free yourself of the oppressiveness of Instagram is to accept that it is an addiction), it has been either because someone had asked me to come back or I myself went back because that was where all of my friends were. That was where all of their lives were happening. Not being active there felt as if I was missing out on important aspects of my friends and family's lives. Which of course is nowhere near the truth. For the people that matter, there was no information regarding them that I was uniquely able to know only because of IG. Conversely, the only utility of IG was to keep me updated with the lives of people that did not really matter to me (that much).
The other reason why I kept going back was to showcase myself. To upload my life and offer it for consumption by others. When you upload aspects of your life on social media, you're commodifying yourself and offering life events as content for others to consume. Now this works for some people, they don't have an issue with it and continue. I think these are rare people. For most individuals, including me it feels as if we have to produce and capture our life in a particular way only so that we may upload it on the gram. The psychological assault of such an approach is immense. If 'real life' is a life lived in which you do not alter your experiences or react in certain fixed patterns to be packaged for others to consume, social media makes you do the absolute opposite. It makes you alter your life, behavior, reaction etc. to optimize for more likes and reach. In other words, any social media influencer (established or wannabe) is living an inauthentic life. And there is no other way to look at it.
You could make the argument that by that logic, every user of these platforms is living an inauthentic life because they do alter things in their lives even if on a smaller scale to be able to upload it online. And guess what? You wouldn't be entirely wrong. The only difference is between the degree of the 'authenticity'. Social media influencers model all of their life around optimizing for likes and comments, and normal users only do that occasionally. The worst issue in my opinion is that it is a slippery slope and it fundamentally changes the way you view reality. Once you start to commodify your life for likes and comments, there is no going back. Why hold back at making vlogs for two hours a day? You have 24 hours in a day, why not commodify all of it? Anyway content is in short supply these days. Therefore the reality becomes inauthentic in toto. Everything that one does becomes optimized for content. Not life.
If you're generally interested in the reason why you should leave all social media, read Jason Lanier's short book '10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now'. But of course I did not delete any of my social media accounts after reading this. for I was an addict.1
So what has changed then? Well, actually nothing significant. I was just tired of knowing the truth and still not acting on it. On a side note, I was always clear that one day I will leave the platform for good. And I knew this because I could not imagine any version of myself in the future using IG and not feeling bad because of it. And I think it is because the platform is designed to be a social comparison tool. Comparison is at the core of their UX or at least it was that way for me. I think it is so because it is a lifestyle app - it exaggerates the comparisons, which for example an application like twitter or Clubhouse do not do as much. I could not help but keep on comparing my life and achievements with others. 'Look at the places they have visited, 'look at how rich they are', 'look at the great university they go to' etc. One of the reasons I used to give myself most of the times while relapsing was that it was a problem with me and not the platform. That if not on IG, I'll compare myself with others elsewhere.2 And I cannot keep on running away from all the platforms just because I am flawed in this way. Well to be fair it is pretty sound logic, except I could never learn to not compare myself while being there. And thus the learning never really happened. The usage cost would always be more than any benefits.
So today I deleted my account for the last time in my life. I am never going back. Ever. And that is the story of how there is no version of me who does not end up deleting Instagram. No matter how I change my interaction and usage of the application, the costs always outweigh any benefits. It is time to say goodbye, the same way I said goodbye to Facebook a year ago. I wonder if twitter is next.
P.S: This piece is in no way passing any value judgment on the the application as a whole, or alternatively on social media as a whole. This piece only reflects my personal experiences which may differ from others.
If you liked this piece, you can also share this post with your friends, family and loved ones by clicking here:
I would love to hear from you! Leave your comments down below.
The only social platforms I am active on is twitter. And the reason for that is that I do not use it as a social media at all. I use it as a learning tool. See how I optimized twitter for that, and how you can too here.
You would have rightly guessed by now that I do not use LinkedIn or spend much time on it. It can become a black hole of bad comparisons, and I would like to be clear of that.
Hey, i absolutely love your work. Not just the blog but also your poems. I write poetry too (I'm @abouttherhyme on instagram) and I found our thought work to be similar. Im also in jindal so totally related to the re-learning article also lol. hoping to meet someday :)