Authentic Instagram.

You might have read this article when it came out last year.

It is about an Australian Instagrammer who quit social media claiming that it "was not real life."

She re-posted the captions on many of her photos to much more honest descriptions of what went into each photo with the point of showing how much work and vanity went into making each one look spontaneous and enviable. 

It is well worth a read/look through.

It kind of gave rise to a cry of "social media isn't genuine."

Which was then answered with things like this which claim "It is up to us to be as genuine or not as we choose."

I tended to be on the later side of that argument. I fully support Essena's decision to leave Instagram and think that it was a sound decision based on how she described her experiences with social media and the way that it made her act and feel. However, does that mean all people on social media are not genuine? I don't think so. I think we all get to choose how we want to engage on social media platforms. 

Instagram, for me, was always just about sharing. I view it more like microblogging. I feel like it is the social media platform that I am the best at. It aligns with my kind of creativity better than Twitter or Facebook. Although I have both Twitter and Facebook as well. But Instagram always felt more personal to me. It is where I share the most. It lets me combine photography with a sort of blogging. 

I always just posted what ever I wanted because I wanted to.

But the last year or so I have noticed a small change. I am not a large Instagram account. I don't have very many followers. But even still, as I moved from having tens of followers to a couple hundred, I noticed I was starting to care a lot more about getting likes and more followers. I thought that if I could grow my followers to the thousands it could start to open up new opportunities for me. Maybe I could make some money, do some sponsored posts. I have heard of people getting travel gigs. Tourism companies and airlines paying for a trip with only the expectation that you would take photos and post about the country/airline/area you were travelling through. And friends, that is my dream job. Seriously, Tourism New Zealand, call me anytime. It is a yes.

But as I started to try harder to promote my photos I noticed a whole different side of Instagram. When I say "promote" my posts I really just mean that I started using hashtags and started working harder to engage with new accounts. I really wasn't trying that hard. But still, things changed. I found I started getting way more likes on my photos and I started to gain followers. But here's the thing, I was gaining orange follower notifications, but my numbers weren't really changing. I have some Instagram tracking software and started paying more attention to it. Basically I would get a ton of people who would follow me, wait for a day to see if I would follow them, and then unfollow me. If I did follow them, they would usually still unfollow me a day or two later. 

It just felt like such a hollow thing. Everyone just trying to gain followers and likes. No real connection or authenticity. I began to wonder if that is what it takes to succeed at Instagram. I thought maybe I needed to start doing the same. Spend all my time following and unfollowing in an attempt to gain followers for myself so that I could get to the point where those followers could get me something. 

But man, I just didn't want to do it. I hate the feeling of someone following me, waiting for me to follow them, and then unfollowing. It kind of hurts. You think that someone likes what you have created only to find they were just after a +1 on their followers list. 

I am reading a book right now called Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I will probably do a whole post about it once I am finished. I am completely convinced that everyone in the world will benefit from reading it. Brené is a shame and empathy researcher and this book is about vulnerability and how the courage to be vulnerable is what combats shame and leads to wholehearted living. More to come on it in its own post. But I just want to bring in a bit from where she is talking about our culture of scarcity:

Scarcity is the "never enough" problem. The word scarce is from the Old Norman French scars, meaning "restricted in quantity" (c. 1300). Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don't have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants.

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we're holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it.

[...]

Scarcity doesn't take hold in a culture overnight. But the feeling of scarcity does thrive in shame-prone cultures that are deeply steeped in comparison and fractured by disengagement. (By shame-prone culture, I don't mean that we're ashamed of our collective identity, but that there are enough of us struggling with the issue of worthiness that it's shaping the culture.)

This is an amazingly accurate description of the way that I was starting to feel about Instagram. I was no longer enough if I couldn't get people to follow me. I was starting to obsessively check my follower account and compare it to others. I would great if I had more than someone, and shame would creep in if I had less. 

So what is the solution to scarcity? She goes on:

The counterapproach to living in scarcity is not about abundance. In fact, I think abundance and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of "never enough" isn't abundance or "more than you could ever imagine." The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call Wholeheartedness. As I explained in the Introduction, there are many tenants of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness: facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough. 

So how does that change they way that I interact on Instagram?

I should add that I can't stress enough that this is simply a personal assessment. I have no judgement or advice for anyone except myself. I understand that different people view Instagram and social media in different ways. For example, I know that for some people social media is their job or where they get most of their business. Of course they are going to interact with in differently than me. I have decided that for me, Instagram is a creative outlet. It is about art and creating things that I think are beautiful. It is a way for me to catalogue them for myself and share them with others. I want it to remain that way. I want people to feel like I am authentic and real in the way that I share and interact.  

So I started to put together a list of rules for myself to try and keep it that way.

Raiah's rules for Instagram (probably incomplete and will be added to in future):

1. Like photos because I actually like them. Follow people because I like their photos. Never like/follow to try and get likes/follows back. Don't unfollow people if they don't follow back.
2. Don't give into photo envy or follower number envy. Try not to look at that stuff at all if you can.
3. If I like something, like it. If I don't, don't. Try to engage with people in a real way, don't engage with people in the hopes of getting something back. If I like what someone is doing, tell them! It is not about reciprocation, it is about honesty. 
4. Post whatever photos I want to. But post them because I want to share them, not because I want likes.
5. Don't feel bad about trying to make my photos look awesome. I am making art, make it whatever I want it to be. But make sure it comes from an "I want to make beautiful things" place, not a "making beautiful things give me worth" place.
6. Post honest captions. Try to be vulnerable sometimes and inject some honesty into what I say.
7. Try not to do activities solely for the Instagram photo, but don't feel bad about wanting to document and share my experience. Try to find balance.
8. Try to respond to comments when they are from people I actually know/love or have a relationship with. 
9. Mostly just try to be genuine. 

Obviously I needed a photo to finish this post, right? This photo is from a recent road trip and was the result of many attempts to take a nice selfie with the wind in my eyes and just my face generally not cooperating. So I though, I'll just close my eyes and see how that works out.