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The crisis of Instagram: the end of the photos, the success of the ridiculous

Instagram is starting to look a bit like Instagram. And this can be a problem. Gone are those early years of a social network that was used to share our photos as if it were a digital album. With a handful of filters, yes. In this way, the images had a colder point. There were also “frames” with which to refine the frame of the snapshot with a touch halfway between vintage and tacky. They were naive beginnings, where we photographed anything and it didn’t matter if we had three likes.

Instagram has become something of a meeting point. It was very easy to see your friends’ photos and comment on them, as they came out in order of publication. Without algorithms that hide what doesn’t have a quick flurry of likes.

Everything began to change with the arrival of celebrities and influencers. What caused it anyone would aspire to become “famous” on Instagramimitating photos of their idols, trying to add as many followers as possible and, consequently, as many “likes” as a measure of social acceptance or even as a way to earn money if brands pay you to pose with their products.


The user himself was adapting his life to photographable plans to display on his profile and thereby projecting a life of happiness. Artificial happiness. Now, even the holidays are planned in search of the most ‘instagrammable’ destination, where to pose in the most spectacular way and get the most captivating touches of light and color. Only give the information that’s right for you, of course. If you’ve docked at a friend’s friend’s yacht, this fact isn’t worth mentioning: pose on the yacht as if it were your own or at least because your followers speculate on it. If you are staying in the ugly, seedy and cheap hostel that you found many kilometers from the center, it is never shown even casually stories. It is the key to Instagram success: it allows you to frame and tell only what interests you to build the story you want. What is out of range doesn’t matter, it doesn’t contribute if it isn’t cold. But beware, this need to try to live up to a skewed social expectation can generate frustration. Much.

The situation is complicated by the growth of TikTok, as a frenzied new entertainment seeker among the younger generation. Instagram executives feel they are falling behind and that photos from a trip and a handful of stories that expire in 24 hours are no longer enough. They want their network, like TikTok, to be powered by their users’ videos. Twist: The Instagram algorithm almost no longer shows photoseven less if they are not body poses with enough flashes to seduce hundreds of likes in seconds, and promotes the recordings they call “rells”. Coil, in English.

Instagram wants to put its users to work. Let the models sit, dance, record bubbly all the time until they make the video with more hearts. The more grotesque, the greater the visibility. Come on, you have to lose the fear of ridicule. Meanwhile, while he wants to imitate the teenage boom of tiktoker videos, Mark Zuckerberg – owner of the store – does not realize that he is expelling his potential, complementary, differentiated and even more massive audience than that of TikTok. Instagram’s original personality is being torpedoed, what made this social network unique turn it into an imitation. A place where most of the population just wanted to share their images and enjoy those of their friends. There was no other application that was such a simple, instant and participatory photo album. Now users lose their friends’ posts and feel that their friends are not seeing their pictures. Unless they spend half a day recording a video of themselves as idiots.

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