Instagram Jam?

I'll preface this with . . if you 'liked' me on Instagram and if I 'liked' you on Instagram, then generally I liked what I saw - the stuff below this isn't aimed at anyone in particular, it's just a general observation. So without further ado, I'll don my waders and get stirring . . . . 

Morning folks - a strange title for a strange series of thoughts distilled over a smallish period of time, so if you fancy a ponder and beard scratch, read on.

If however you think: 

"Wtf, fcecking ignorant, reactionary old bastard . . "

then please feel free to go your own way.

The Doubt Of The Instagram Feed . . .
Do They Really 'Like' Me?

The above is an example of the sort of stuff I was scrabbling around to find and put on my Instagram feed. 

It's not the sort of photo I'd really do anything with normally . . . . 

As a member of the DCA's Photo Forum, I was encouraged at the end of last year to register myself for Facebook and Instagram; we (as a collective) were using them for comms and self-promotion and it was generally regarded as a 'good thing'. 

I've shied away from 'social media' for as long as it has existed, simply because (and despite it being at times a power for good) it reminded me of those horrible cliques you got at school, whereby only the beautiful people hung around with only the beautiful people. 

Everyone else seemed (at times) to be regarded as something brown stuck to the sole of a shoe - I was certainly in the latter category.

However the Forum isn't really like that, being eclectic and egalitarian, so, Grooooovy! I thought and signed up.

And therein lies the tale. 

Facebook. With all my doubt and mistrust in play, I created my account. 

It is used only for the Forum and a couple of friends, but I'm not fond of it. 

I doubt many of you will remember Mark Lamarr's rants from Buzzcocks ("I'd say I wasn't fond of it, but I'd rather have habanero chillis rubbed into my eyeballs"), but that's been my feeling.

Instagram though was another matter. 

In fact, it became so horribly addictive that I found myself posting nearly 130 of my images (with nicely quippy notes explaining the whys and wherefores) in a time period of roughly 6 months.

"Oh," (you'll be thinking) "that's nothing - SnozzB29D* posted 3.2 TRILLION images in his 28 day tour of New York's Garbage facilities . . . you're a wimp man!" 

Well yes, maybe, but when you're operating with film, both using, processing AND printing it, then things take a little longer. 

But there I was like a hamster in a wheel, whizzing around desperately finding my 'best images'; hurriedly leaping into the darkroom to produce something/anything that I could scan and 'add to my feed' and impress my audience with my photographic and darkroom skillz. 

Sure I only had 36 followers, but who was to say that maybe, one morning, I'd switch on my computer and discover that I'd 'gone viral' and was being followed by 26 million people. 

Oh the adoration and kudos! 

Maybe Ilford Photo would spot me and I'd get free film and invited to do an interview!! . . . this could be the start of something BIG. 

At last, heading towards the skip end of my life, I would have my small dreams of being able to take landscape photographs for a living realised.

Everyone would love ME!!

Ah, y'see, when you put it like that it is extraordinarily seductive and addictive isn't it?

 

It's no surprise to me that nearly THE WHOLE WORLD of practicing photographers has an Instagram feed.

And why not . . you too could be famous!

But with that urge, comes THE NIGGLE.

Probably you have a 'feed', and you've maybe got a whole bunch of eager hangers-on awaiting the cast-away crumbs of wisdom, insight and downright hubris from your table whilst you enjoy a tasty morsel or five with Ansel and Eugene and Minor etc etc etc. 

YOU ARE UP THERE WITH THE GODS.

In other words, people 'like' you.

And, if your Mum brought you up properly, you should 'like' them in return. 

The trouble is, say you ONLY have under 100 followers and they're all fairly active creative people, and they all are actively posting, then you possibly have to react to approximately 100-ish posts of stuff you might not 'like' but almost feel that you have to, simply to be polite. 

So say you have OVER 100 followers - do you become a rude bastard and ignore the greater majority of people's 'feeds' simply because it is overwhelming and takes up a huge amount of valuable creative time? 

Remember a lot of these people are creative too.

They have feelings (sob).

Even with my paltry amount I found NOT reacting was making me feel GUILTY.

As far as I can see, Instagram is mostly run on a "you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours" level of politely 'liking' other people's stuff. 

There's little room for NOT reacting in a positive manner.

And (hypothetically) being raised properly, does the fact that you're effectively ignoring people who seem to 'like' what you are doing, mean that (rather like a heavy-handed religious education) you are slowly becoming en-mired in a profoundly deep tract of GUILT.

And this set me thinking.

If I was feeling like this, was there any point in pursuing it any further?

And as that distilled (in the way that my thought processes seem to go these days) over a month or so, I came to a conclusion:

If I was just being polite and 'liking' 👍 stuff . . then surely everyone else was doing the same thing. 

And if that was the case, then the whole house of cards comes down, because either you're reacting whether you want to or not (out of guilt) or you could be considered to be being rude because you're not reacting.

What a fucking turmoil! 

Critical faculties be damned!

Someone could say:

 

"Oh, I really 'like' that!"

 

and be thinking in their head:

What a pile of horseshit (but I suppose I had better 'like' them back because they 'liked' that picture of the donkey with a hat on that I took last month). 

And of course, the nature of the beast is that it works in a counter-direction, as in you really did like the donkey picture . . but this new stuff that they're posting?:

"Do I really have to 'like' this steaming pile of Dingo droppings?"

or

"My God, this is the most turgid, pointless pile of Cat vomit, I have ever seen!"

But you click or tap that heart anyway!

I know the above comments will have won me no friends, but at the end of the day, I am just observing and thinking and pleading for a bit of honesty. 

If you don't like it, SAY IT! 

You don't have to be nasty about it, but please, stop reacting with 'likes' to everything.

I'm sure poster and postee would get on better with critical faculties engaged.

There is a little aside to this - say you have relatives who are posting pictures of their lives, then 'liking' is an acceptable activity; but to base your photographic output on other peoples polite judgement . . . well . . . 

And so, the more I thought about this the more I thought nobody is criticising any of the photos I am posting. 

OK some of them were alright, but some of them weren't, and the thing was, nobody told me otherwise. Whilst being polite is generally a good thing, blanket 'liking' really isn't (to my mind).

So, faced with that, I thought: 

"Feck It. No More!"

And stopped. 

The initial run-off was a bit strange (such is the power of addiction) but I soon calmed down and realised the whole thing had been (for me) a complete waste of time.

However (being part-writer) I was rather pleased with the notes I had added to accompany every photograph, so I thought why not make a small downloadable PDF to attach to the side of this Blog . . . it might be interesting, or else could be printed onto some lovely soft toilet paper.

And then I tried to archive MY photographs and MY content and could I? 

Easily?? 

Nope. 

There's a massive workaround (which is far too dull to detail, but that even a chimp with a stick could work out eventually) but even then there's no guarantee that you'll be able to do it properly.

The nature of the beast is that certain photographs have no text at all, whereas others have the whole shebang - it is very hit and miss . . . and more importantly incredibly annoying, that something so universally used does not provide a way of easily being able to archive what is your own copyrighted imagery and text. 

It is pretty disgraceful if you think about it.

Anyway, Instagram, I AM DONE.

 

There is a bit more to this though.

Let me ask you a question, as a photographer to a photographer - why are you bunging all this information, all these ideas, all your personal viewpoints on picture taking, all your creative potential (triumphs and pitfalls) onto a place whereby someone can just look at it and in the wink of an eye be gone somewhere else . . . 

Your photographs are now just a part of the VISUAL CHAFF and energy-hogging data that is clogging up the world.

Surely what you are doing means something more to you than that?

I'm not being precious about this, but it is true.

Personally, I can often find picture taking AND MAKING a total slog; it is maybe the same for you, but it still has meaning for us. 

It's often hard work, but that doesn't dilute its relevance in your life 

So why cast your creativity into a whirlwind of inconsequentiality?

Why are you (yes, YOU) bothered about what other people think about what you are photographing? That's an interesting one - and the only reason I can think (and this is because in hindsight I was as guilty as anyone else of it) is narcissism. 

You/We crave that attention. 

On the surface it might seem that say Ilford could see your feed and pronounce you as the second coming . . . 

But that isn't going to happen, because there's an absolute tidal wave of imagery out there, and no way of whinnowing the wheat from the chaff. 

Millions of people take photographs.

Billions of images of all sorts of nonsensical shite are posted online every day

24/7, 365.

The thing (picture taking and making) which was once (I was going to say elitist, but it wasn't because of its popularity) an occasional activity (for the majority of the world's population) is now like breathing. 

People photograph themselves farting, dying, knitting, hitting themselves; they landscape and portrait left, right and centre; you name 'it' (and every known variation of 'it') and there's imagery up there. 

You have not a hope in hell of anyone coming along and saying: 

"Oooooh, that's GOOD!"

and passing you the candy cane of good fortune. 

Eyes and brains are jaded, simply because of the onslaught. 

So, Instagram as a way of 'getting yourself out there' is about as pointless as eating a handful of gravel.

Oh, but I have to keep my followers informed of what I am doing.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything.

If I am being honest I doubt anyone cares about your stuff.

Sure they can 'like' it, but is that (as I now see it) just a subconscious ploy to get you to 'like' them back; inflate those delusions of grandeur and subdue that good ol' guilt? 

As far as I can see, the whole thing is like the old statement:

You can't polish a turd . . . but you can roll it in glitter.

Data about you and your whiles and wherefores as a singular human being is being crunched and has been crunched - who knows to what end. 

At the moment it is to feed advertising, but that could (quite easily) drop away to something all the more sinister. 

(I know . . . I read far too much SF when I was young).

Anyway, no matter what I think . . . Instagram? I have dropped out man.

Finito.

It is really strange how the world has changed in the time I've been writing this Blog. 

Blogging has gone from a 'modern', quite neat form of self-publishing (scratching that narcissistic itch again) to becoming a dim and dusty corner of the internet, that people don't really give a shit about anymore. 

Actually, you can apply that to a lot of things that are happening in the world right now - the musician and journalist Rick Beato addresses such things every now and then with regard to music and it is quite frightening what is going on. 

And the same thing has happened with Photoshop too - the ability to Ai-generate that which was not there - is a picture worth a thousand words, or the other way around? 

Either way, watch out - you'll soon have no need of your eyes or brain.

It's like the spark to improve oneself has gone out of the world and we're all headed down a one-way street to nowhere. 

Brains are outsourced to phones. 

The merest (adult) child's tantrum can be amplified to the point of bloodshed. 

People die horribly every day but the tide of imagery is such that we're losing the ability to be concerned or empathetic, or even trust what we are seeing. 

In truth things are in quite a state. 

Mr. Berners-Lee opened Pandora's Box.

Anyway, enuffzenuff. 

Hopefully I have made you think. 

Or if I haven't that's fine too. 

You and me might be the same, but we're as different as Apples and Squids.

For me it is simply a case of now being able to see The Wood.

TTFN

H xx