Why I'm Quitting Instagram
A pithy-ish polemic
But first, “housekeeping,” as they say (office work?): I’ve had a few people ask about subscription renewals, because if you had a comp’d paid-subscription from my deck pre-sale it probably expired recently and you probably then got a coercive marketing message from Substack strong-arming you into renewal. If you did renew, thank you very much — your support means a lot to me, and I am trying to ideate a commensurate “gift with purchase” that isn’t another deck (because presumably you already have one). If you didn’t renew, Substack quite likely led you to believe that my silence since has been due to a thundering paywall (I imagine a moat, fortified drawbridge, etc) but here I am to say, nay, it is just my usual irrepressible timeliness (or lack thereof). In other words, you haven’t missed anything yet, and if you want to spend that $55 or $65 (I don’t remember which) somewhere else (locally, supportively, creatively) — please do, and tell me about it, and I'll comp you another year. Or do renew, and when I figure out an appropriately clever complimentary exchange I'll send it to you too. How’s that?
Tomorrow I will delete my Instagram (several of them) and Facebook (haven’t been on it in years, but my profile’s still there “holding space”). This is certainly not a radical act (please tell me where we are meeting to plan and carry out those — those where we put our real bodies in the way and our real resources towards fighting THIS)1 but (to me) it is an important step on the way toward a radically different world than the one we’ve all swiped our way into, even if that world is much smaller (perhaps just as small as my own perception — I should be so lucky!) and less “influential.” From what I hear we’re leaving in droves — good — and here’s my addition to the discourse around why, and a little how.
A lot of my “personal work” in the past 8 months has been growing my somatic awareness + listening to what my body holds. Simply: holding a phone to scroll it feels shitty. In my neck, to my eyes, in my heart.
Let’s acknowledge right away that in this age of choiceful poison there are a lot of addictive options in the social media sphere — Instagram was the platform that worked best for me for the longest time (still images plus words are kinda my thing, I never asked to pivot to video but Stories scratched an itch I didn’t know I had without having to acclimate to a whole new interface) but if your DOC has been Facebook (boomer!), TikTok (kids these days amirite), Twitter (RIP) or any of the many others… just substitute its name for the ‘gram and I’ll wager it’s mostly relevant. Also relevant is that deleting one app won’t fix the underlying phone addiction, either — the compulsive checking of email and headlines, the dopamine seek. But it’s movement. Movement is good. Go on, give your shoulders a roll and reach your arms out wide, stretch your jaw in a silent scream…
Imagine Instagram were new, now. Would you join? Ads every 4th post, half the rest still “marketing” without the label? Censors that flag the phrase above, but not blatant hate & rampant disinformation? I don’t think i’d be interested at all. What’s the hook? It’s that we’re hooked already. THEY designed it that way. But THEIR status relies on our participation.
Truly, in the era of oligarchs we must vote with our dollars and our attention and the accounts we hold. THEY made this exactly like this and THEY are counting on it having dumbified and numbified and stripped us of agency because it was DESIGNED to do so — I don’t need to tell you again YOU ARE THE PRODUCT but I will. This is also some of why I’m fully deleting my accounts and not just deactivating them — not that I believe it’s not all been stripped and mined and taken already but that little number (-1) matters somewhere. I guess it matters to me.
Relatedly, I also recently canceled Prime … only to learn it will still be active until my “renewal date” sometime in July, which is a bummer in a “looking for the immediate gratification of making a statement cancelation” kinda way. This is a new-ish policy change for Amazon, and there are reddit threads explicating how to get a prorated refund anyway, should you choose to make a statement anyway (I may still, FWIW, again with the (if) it matters to me).
Side note: After I drew these, one night while I was cooking dinner Dante mentioned that he had seen some crazy shit on Reels: people literally dying in videos pushed to the handheld screen of my 15 year old. Meta apologized for the “sensitive content.” That’s where we’re at, folks.
Mark, Jeff, Elon, etc: Fuck you.
The great promise of social media was that it would connect us more. & there were times that it did — but I’m 44, I have a teenage kid + I remember my life before apps + smart phones. I remember my friends. The coming climate/geo/political emergencies will test our bodies + systems in ways we now find hard to comprehend. We will need each other. IRL relationships resist cyberattack!
Two things here: 1) since creating and posting these, that teenage kid of mine experienced a super-messy-messed-up catfishing incident that played out all over social media and leaked around the school. I won’t go into details here, but the Kids are Not Alright. My own high school experience was hard enough and marked enough with slut shaming and note passing and general rumor milling. That it all happens in full view with receipts now is … !@$#%$#!
2) It’s not that community hasn’t been discovered and strengthened and disseminated online, it’s that (see above) (among other issues) these systems are owned and algorithm’d by people who DO NOT have the best interests of those communities in mind. I do take issue with the phrase “the master’s house will not be dismantled with the master’s tools” (seems to me the master probably has some pretty nice tools & it’s the hand that wields them that owns them) but the master’s network will probably not readily accommodate his dismantling, dig? Which is why I’m wondering why people keep on only organizing on social media… Posters, people! Billboards! Guerrilla shit!
How will I, an artist, share my work + my words without the ease of Instagram? I don’t know exactly, but I know that feeling the friction of finding new outlets is a big part of why I want to try. Creativity thrives with a little resistance. Modern life has removed so many barriers to instant gratification, we’ve lost sight of the energizing effect of desire.
Reading reference: Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
Very tangential: the “Malthusian Swerve” (humans innovate better under pressure)
Obviously Substack is one such outlet (though not without its own techbro shitty shit) but what else? for all that I occasionally (ok, often) feel oldish and tired and totally left behind, I’m grateful to be of a generation that grew up and even began cosplaying adulthood without (as a trajectory) personal computers, the internet, mobile phones, smart phones, social media, AI. I have the innate ability to imagine other options (including the lack thereof) as well as the tech-savvy to use (some of) what’s currently in play. It requires FRICTION though, and that’s what I’m looking to embrace: the not-so-easy answer, the less-quick fix.
Yes, I've seen art on Instagram that’s gobsmacked me, that I wouldn’t have seen, created by people i’d never naturally meet. I celebrate that, and i’ll miss it. But I’ve also seen too many creators + creatives homogenize their work + their curiosity in order to appease + appeal to an ever-narrowing aesthetic + algorithm. Discovering one’s style shouldn’t be learning what’s most liked, but developing a visual language to say what you most need to say.
dear god, I’m so tired of the slop and the beigeification — the same old shit telephoned into having lesser and lesser edge. Where’s the weird, the what was that? When I was a working designer I definitely had a time of trying to make likes like the others with higher numbers of followers etc and ugh, just ughhhhh, how I bored myself the most. I cringe every time I hear some young artist in a class wondering what they should do with their style instead of talking about what they’re wanting to say, what their hands want to make, what their eyes are feeding on. But if what we’re feeding our eyes on is the constant regurgitation of mass appeal — how very Hapsburgian, how much mush.
Even after Instagram stopped being fun, I thought it could still grow my business. For many artists, it’s our Swiss army marketing tool: website, biz card + newsletter all in one. And if it actually worked as promised? Great! I’ve rarely tried to “increase my reach” in the 13 yrs I’ve been on the platform. But I have more followers now than ever and fewer people actually viewing this post. That’s at least in part because others are coming to the same conclusion: not to spend more time here, but less.
Of all the platforms, Instagram probably went hardest selling the notion that it was necessary for business. Its success stories were a hugely important aspect of its model: something aspirational, seemingly attainable, you can do it from home! — and if the likes didn’t roll in fast enough there were plenty of social media -consultants and -managers out there promising tips and tricks towards higher engagement. For a long time I believed it was true, that I couldn’t not be on it, that I couldn’t afford to log off. But when I did a simple internal audit — no real math required! — the numbers were never there. When I was working full+ time as an illustrator/graphic artist, every client I had was through word-of-mouth, real world connections or old-fashioned networking. When I was trying to sell decks, the time and money I spent “investing” in the algorithm never paid a profit in sales. Instagram was great as an easy portfolio but once again… it’s not been there to make me money, I’ve been there to make money for Zuck. Fuck!
PostsPosters
StoriesLegends
ReelsReal Lives
you don’t own me
I have no illusions that my choices give any pause to the steamrolling machine of ….. progress ….. but they do create a more livable presence of mind… a present I actually have agency in, after all.
(Oops for spelling “presence” wrong …. or is it “prescience” ? )
I think we all feel like we each of us should somehow be able to save the whole world
and this isn’t fair. but we see that huge parts of the world are run by little men with so much power and that they are kinda just like us living on their little phones … shitposting and sharing memes. just like us (so it seems like maybe shouldn’t we also have that same power too?) and also
I think we feel totally powerless because we’ve been learning over the past 15 years or so to abdicate our power(s) of community/expression/information/trade/design/exchange to mediation by the little flat screen … systemic externalization.
I don’t think that will change overnight. Sometimes I think we’re too far gone, too enmeshed and embedded and embattled etc, too easily swayed & hooked & locked in with all the reasons there are to be so (same day shipping. instant answers. prewritten replies)…
I said last night to my dad after long rants over a great dinner, walking back to the car and a little embarrassed by my proclamations (you know how I can be, haha) “I think I’m just more of a nihilist than I used to be”
and I think what I’m turning around in my mind, finding the taste of, is the surrender therein, the freedom of
“But the hammer is coming down on the earth!” His voice cracked. “I have to stop it.”
“What if the hammer is already down?” asked Campbell. “What if it’s too late to save the world?”
“I guess I’d just go get a cabin in Maine. Sit by the sea. Watch the world die and try to honor it.”2
Grief taught me (teaches me) this. Not to replace what’s lost (impossible, untrue) but to seek new pathways toward the spaces that the loss made visible + bare. Not to fill them, to color them in. The world expands.
I miss Ben. I miss my partner and companion and friend. He’s been almost five years gone and the void where he was still knocks me out all the time. But a lot of good therapy and the unavoidance of deep grief (plus maybe a dearth of eligible interests) have led not to any one-to-one replacement (impossible, untrue) but a vast expansion of capacity and experience. My loneliness, when allowed to breathe and interrogate itself, bloomed into deep friendships and augmented community. It learned to care for itself, to share of itself. My grief created whole worlds that had little to do with grief at all, after all.
After my sister Kelsey died so much magic rushed in (the weird, inexplicable, sparkly shit of summer ghost stories and shrugged proof-of-afterlife nuggets) I just thought, poised as I have always been between the woo and the scientific method, well. Nature abhors a vacuum. Let it in.
For a sweet time-in-time social media was a medium unto itself, a storytelling tool that felt fresh and fun. Then in the era of buyouts and takeovers it whispered (& shouted) its shadow aims and allegiances, more than hints of malaise — but it kept us connected when we had to hunker down and it was a lifeline for me in the dark early days of pandemic/fire/widowing. Instagram was the original venue for my Tarot deck, where I first posted each card and wrote their first descriptions. The Bon Sequitur project grew from that space and then it outgrew it. I don’t know what’s next but I’m excited for some spaciousness, some stretch and then?
When it’s right it’s right. When it’s time to go it’s time to go...
Thanks for watching and following along.
Some resources/sympathetic notions:
Social Media is Cooked — Dark Properties
Journey to the Land of Presence
Reports From an Artist Who Left Instagram
and so on.
NEXT SOUP NITE!
is Tuesday, April 8th. I haven’t decided the menu yet but as usual there will be both meaty and vegan options, nice people and no pressure. HMU to get on the list! The following Soup Nite will be 4/22.
Hope to see you there, or somewhere else.
♥️!💋 Z
Perhaps it is at my house, several Tuesdays a month, over soup?
from the Unsettlers by Mark Sundeen, page 125
This inspired me to delete the app off my phone and wow my brain is grasping in the dark for it. I’m so inspired by your invitation to bring it all IRL. Memes on telephone poles!
I can't love this enough, Zephyr! I have been dragging my feet about fully deleting IG and facebook, despite barely engaging...and feeling gross everytime I do...this is the nudge I needed <3 Feel your words deeply.