RIP Instagram

Chances are if you are reading this, you have a slight interest in deleting your account too.

Instagram commenced by the innocent idea of having your gallery in which you could showcase precious moments, edit photos, and share with friends. Instagram was meant to be a community app for photography and now has turned into a "lifestyle" app. Today, Instagram is everything it wasn’t expected to be, another successfully damaged experiment. It has become a mass market social media app that twists reality. People have created personas to those they are, to live a life that is only unauthentic. Filters, literally mask fact. Likes, determine value and popularity. Comments are usually posted in hopes of getting one back.

If Instagram was gone forever, how many people would still dress as provocative on the streets? How many people would work out? How many people would enjoy their silence? How many people would lose a job or many over it? How many people would go to the places they go to because of the food or the art?

Instagram has only helped us forget the essence of why anything is cool. Instagram became the norm, the average. Every day, we glance at people’s stories on our spare time to harbor feelings of jealousy, resentment, or FOMO. We forget to live the precious moment we have in front of us. We stalk our ex-boyfriends and their new girlfriends and her whole network trying to find who we have in common. We crash and burn our self-esteem comparing ourselves to others figures, faces, financial statuses. We tear each other apart and kick our hopes and dreams thinking we aren’t good enough.

We sit at restaurants to take photos, to feed our egotistical/narcissist persona living within us. We waste 30 minutes making the perfect video to post on our story. What are we doing? We walk with a big smile on our faces because some guy who looks cool DMed us or because we hit our highest like count? We have let social media define who we are and have forgotten that we will never know who we are. We must remember that life is something we create, not something we post. We forget the most beautiful moments in life don’t have a picture. We ignore the greatness of that sunset because the image didn’t capture it.

Instagram makes people ill, it feeds a false ego and creates a fake reality that one wants to show people. You take hundreds of photos to show the world a character that doesn’t exist. What people forget to realize is that people don’t forget. Once you have posted that picture, put up that quote, updated your username, the world you live in, will be unforgiving and cruel, and that persona you created will be stuck to your shadow forever.

Once you hit upload, chances are you might end up on a guys group chat, or the shit talk of your enemy, or even your friends. Being stripped of all your imperfections, one by one. That doesn’t bother you? Ok, well, let’s see when you have a thousand likes, but no real friends to stand up for you. Five thousand followers but no one to hang out with. Will you read all the comments when you’re in the hospital and no longer have the figure you did?

The most authentic life you can have is by doing things that draw your attention, not because everyone else is doing them, but because those interests ignited that light bulb in your head. We have gone so far away chasing who we think we are, with so many possibilities and ideas thrown at us on who you can be. People forgot to be themselves. They pursue different dreams, dress differently, and maybe they’ll never even realize that that was never who they were supposed to become. Instagram just makes your life more confusing and detours you into being who you were from the start. The answers to everything were clear, and somehow humanity has ventured, confused, and tricked itself into things that were never in their paths.

Today, I refuse, I refuse to be average, part of the norm. I refuse to fulfill my ego every time I am sad. I refuse to stir from the root of the problem. I refuse to share my thoughts and style. I refuse to publish where I am. I refuse to live a lie.

I refuse to take part of the Instagram community.