Insta leads you to brain obesity : quick fix, quick bites of junk for bored minds always in need of something easy that don't ask for them to work, but never satisfied enough to stop the scroll. If you want to get in shape and recover from this soulless entertainment, Substack will feed your mind, ask you to think, share opinions, engage with others,... you'll feel human again and connected to others again. Just hope Substack as it grows, won't fall into the same trap as Meta.
Thank you. First, well done. It is incredibly difficult to walk away from that many people.
My recent experience with Insta was them rejecting my comments. Comments to big accounts? Rejected. (In case you're wondering where your engagement went.) Comments to friends who I was trying to express condolences to? Rejected. Comments to ask a question about a printing technique from a lino printer who generously said "feel free to ask questions". Rejected. All because their AI decided I was looking for likes and follows and was spamming. This has happened over the last 6 months or so at least 20 times. Finally, they locked me out of my account (270 followers and a locked account) for 5 days, including my birthday.
Whatever they've done, it's not insta any more. It's some weird mashup of TikTok and X. Nowhere for a newbie artist to be.
Anyway, I appreciate this. I hope you find what you'd like to here!
I took a bunch of screenshots it got so crazy. But a couple of the people with 90,000 or more followers I've known on other platforms when they had 500 (I've been around awhile) and were mutuals of years and years. And all of a sudden they were rejecting my comments to these people. Made me wonder if I all of a sudden was in on why big accounts were having problems with growth.
have you been making any political commentary or engaging with political accounts at all? I started having masses of 'deleted for going against community policy', 'deleted for trying to gather likes in a dishonest way', 'deleted for inappropriate content' warnings and even spent 4 separate weeks in comment jail when I started engaging with pro-Palestinian content...... the algo did NOT like that.......
nope. I am firmly apolitical online, if not IRL. I’ve had some scary things happen to me from total strangers and decided I would keep that part of my life completely separate.
oh yeah I hear you on that. It still might be the aftereffects of that political content crackdown that have been affecting you.... Algorithm was a little confused on what it was supposed to repress. I've had posts taken down that talked about personal fitness, food, finance, random compliments to other people on their posts.... like really common innocuous stuff. It's been weird. It seems to have calmed down a little lately.
well that's good at least. I've kept my name over there, but the account is basically empty. like OP, I find the scraping for AI extremely problematic so they can play by themselves for awhile.
I always felt like IG changes did the most disservice to painters. The slowness of the medium just doesn’t fit in the crank-out-as-much-content-as-possible algorithm nonsense. Turning paintings into videos is a tough business.
For real. I draw with pencils but it's a ton of detail and honestly between two or three days of drawing most people wouldn't even spot the difference if I posted side by side..... it's impossible to generate 'content' unless I wanna do like, I don't know, weird dances or posts about my breakfast. But that doesn't make sense either because nobody follows me for breakfast tips. I don't know what they want us to do. Or rather I do, and it's sad.
When I started to get less and less interaction on Instagram, I just decided to just stop using it. And you know what? No one has still not noticed it.
The only sad part is many big companies I like to follow is still using it.... They update it way more than a newsletter.
So dont be sad for not using it. You will get happier without it 😁
This is happening all over. The fact we have to accept is that all these online spaces are not made for us, we are not the clients. We are the merchandise. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, it's all more or less the same - it starts as a creative fun place to share your interests and express yourself, it gives you tools to connect with people (which you crave, we are all isolated and lonely) and build an audience you can monetize (which is important if you're an artist because who is paying artists anymore), but then the long, slow, asphyxiating squeeeeeeze begins.
They give you less and less and less, they ask for more and more and more. You have to keep paddling furiously just to not lose ground. And all the time you're feeding their machine. Regardless of our individual victories and defeats, the house always wins.
It is sad. The new AI thing is super sad too. I hope the new spaces coming up, like Substack and Cara, will realize the importance of keeping their users safe from AI. I hope there will be a platform that will get big but not corporate in that grabby money-hungry way. Right now I'm really not sure which way to go.
I quit instagram end of last year. When they started to charge Europeans to use it “add free” it prompted me to go and read meta’s privacy policy and I realised that they were training AIs on everyone’s posts, they had snuck it in so quietly that people are only now realising that they have been doing it for such a long time already.
I’m still laughing at myself when I think of a time where my one goal on instagram was to just have more followers than posts. Believe it or not, but it has been so much easier for me to get subscribers on Substack than it ever was for me to gain followers on instagram. Ridiculous that I stayed there for so many years.
Loved this post, David! I always get so hyped up when other “creators” (I’m so tired of that word lol) share about their journeys off of social media - Instagram in particular - especially when they’ve built a significant following. Reading about others experiences with completely validates and normalizes my own. I ESPECIALLY love the few things you wrote about short-form “junk food” vs long-term nourishment. This is literally all I think about all day long 🤣 I JUST hit publish on a post & voiceover yesterday morning that almost read like spoken word at times where I professed my undying love for the slow creative process (painting, art, video) that so many creative souls feel pressured to compromise in order to capture people’s attention. I too saw very fast account growth with Reels in 2020, but then promptly stopped once I realized it was hurting my creative integrity and storytelling. My Instagrowth stagnated completely, and it sorta felt like I faded into obscurity. The scariest part is, I tried to hard to convince my Instagram followers to follow/watch/subscribe elsewhere; but wholey shit, it’s like they’re all sleepwalking zombies! It’s like pulling teeth trying to get them to commit to reading something longer, watching something longer, listening to something longer… it makes me so sad, social media addiction is like some weird mental virus that completely messes with people’s brains. I feel like I’m starting over here on Substack as well, although I did manage to at least bring SOME Instagram peeps over…. But my word, it was difficult. Anyway, this post fired me up lol. My newsletter here on Substack is supposed to be about dogs and animals and nature and stuff, but I just simply CANNOT stop writing and talking about creativity and the state of social media right now, it’s just pouring out of me. Big congrats on the decision to walk away from Insta with a significant following - absolutely an act of creative rebellion! 🔥🔥🔥
Hey Brandy. It often feels so lonely and then I read your reply and realise that there are others in the exact same boat. I’ve managed to import 200 followers over here so I’d say you’re doing really well with 2k! Maybe have two publications , one for the creativity bits? So glad you’ve thrown yourself into it!
Yes!! I do - I started another one called All In One Breath with Gritty Gracious JUST so I could talk about creativity and social media, I just haven’t had the time to do anything with it yet haha. I started it on a completely separate account so I could share notes that were only about social media addiction (I shared your post and a quote from you over there yesterday 😄) Looking forward to following along with your journey!
I’m feeling the same way. I started writing about it and we’re taking this month to investigate our relationship with social media on my sub stack. This week was journal prompts, last week was a resource dump of all the things I’ve been reading that I’ve found helpful as I examine my relationship with it.
This isn’t meant to be a plug for my substack, rather that there seems to be a larger trend of people leaving the social media platforms. I spoke to a stranger today about how they didn’t have social media (this was a more “conventional” person too - an elementary teacher).
You know, I haven’t seen your posts on Insta for a while and you’re not the only person I follow on there who seems to have disappeared from my feed in recent months. Fortunately, I live in Shoreditch so I get to see your work all the time. It brightens my day, so thank you.
I feel everything you’ve said, and I only have 1,200 followers. I’m a singer, and we are expected to do the same short videos, but I am so sick of it and just can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to even post anything! It’s a chore.
Yeah I’ve been gradually ridding myself of social media. I was banned from Twittwr and I just couldn’t warm to Insta- felt i always needed a photo and sometimes I just didn’t feel I had one. All the platforms are about money- even this one, sadly. That’s why they are so keen on telling us how to increase our subscription rate, convert them to paid. It’s all about a piece of the pie….always. And it’s all about whether what we gain outweighs what we dislike. For now i like it here but who’s to say how it will go in the future.
Insta leads you to brain obesity : quick fix, quick bites of junk for bored minds always in need of something easy that don't ask for them to work, but never satisfied enough to stop the scroll. If you want to get in shape and recover from this soulless entertainment, Substack will feed your mind, ask you to think, share opinions, engage with others,... you'll feel human again and connected to others again. Just hope Substack as it grows, won't fall into the same trap as Meta.
I used to love Insta, too. Now, like you, I basically go on to check for DMs, *maybe* scroll for a couple seconds, then I’m out.
Substack is so much better.
Thank you. First, well done. It is incredibly difficult to walk away from that many people.
My recent experience with Insta was them rejecting my comments. Comments to big accounts? Rejected. (In case you're wondering where your engagement went.) Comments to friends who I was trying to express condolences to? Rejected. Comments to ask a question about a printing technique from a lino printer who generously said "feel free to ask questions". Rejected. All because their AI decided I was looking for likes and follows and was spamming. This has happened over the last 6 months or so at least 20 times. Finally, they locked me out of my account (270 followers and a locked account) for 5 days, including my birthday.
Whatever they've done, it's not insta any more. It's some weird mashup of TikTok and X. Nowhere for a newbie artist to be.
Anyway, I appreciate this. I hope you find what you'd like to here!
That’s absolutely crazy. It keeps getting worse and worse, I’d not heard that this was a thing 😫
I took a bunch of screenshots it got so crazy. But a couple of the people with 90,000 or more followers I've known on other platforms when they had 500 (I've been around awhile) and were mutuals of years and years. And all of a sudden they were rejecting my comments to these people. Made me wonder if I all of a sudden was in on why big accounts were having problems with growth.
have you been making any political commentary or engaging with political accounts at all? I started having masses of 'deleted for going against community policy', 'deleted for trying to gather likes in a dishonest way', 'deleted for inappropriate content' warnings and even spent 4 separate weeks in comment jail when I started engaging with pro-Palestinian content...... the algo did NOT like that.......
nope. I am firmly apolitical online, if not IRL. I’ve had some scary things happen to me from total strangers and decided I would keep that part of my life completely separate.
oh yeah I hear you on that. It still might be the aftereffects of that political content crackdown that have been affecting you.... Algorithm was a little confused on what it was supposed to repress. I've had posts taken down that talked about personal fitness, food, finance, random compliments to other people on their posts.... like really common innocuous stuff. It's been weird. It seems to have calmed down a little lately.
well that's good at least. I've kept my name over there, but the account is basically empty. like OP, I find the scraping for AI extremely problematic so they can play by themselves for awhile.
I find the conversations here are much more in depth and impactful than those I have on Instagram
So true 🧡 The place to be (also feels like the early days of blogging and I love that!)
I always felt like IG changes did the most disservice to painters. The slowness of the medium just doesn’t fit in the crank-out-as-much-content-as-possible algorithm nonsense. Turning paintings into videos is a tough business.
For real. I draw with pencils but it's a ton of detail and honestly between two or three days of drawing most people wouldn't even spot the difference if I posted side by side..... it's impossible to generate 'content' unless I wanna do like, I don't know, weird dances or posts about my breakfast. But that doesn't make sense either because nobody follows me for breakfast tips. I don't know what they want us to do. Or rather I do, and it's sad.
Good luck here, welcome
Agreed. It’s so sad that they’ve 💀 it
When I started to get less and less interaction on Instagram, I just decided to just stop using it. And you know what? No one has still not noticed it.
The only sad part is many big companies I like to follow is still using it.... They update it way more than a newsletter.
So dont be sad for not using it. You will get happier without it 😁
This is happening all over. The fact we have to accept is that all these online spaces are not made for us, we are not the clients. We are the merchandise. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, it's all more or less the same - it starts as a creative fun place to share your interests and express yourself, it gives you tools to connect with people (which you crave, we are all isolated and lonely) and build an audience you can monetize (which is important if you're an artist because who is paying artists anymore), but then the long, slow, asphyxiating squeeeeeeze begins.
They give you less and less and less, they ask for more and more and more. You have to keep paddling furiously just to not lose ground. And all the time you're feeding their machine. Regardless of our individual victories and defeats, the house always wins.
It is sad. The new AI thing is super sad too. I hope the new spaces coming up, like Substack and Cara, will realize the importance of keeping their users safe from AI. I hope there will be a platform that will get big but not corporate in that grabby money-hungry way. Right now I'm really not sure which way to go.
I quit instagram end of last year. When they started to charge Europeans to use it “add free” it prompted me to go and read meta’s privacy policy and I realised that they were training AIs on everyone’s posts, they had snuck it in so quietly that people are only now realising that they have been doing it for such a long time already.
I’m still laughing at myself when I think of a time where my one goal on instagram was to just have more followers than posts. Believe it or not, but it has been so much easier for me to get subscribers on Substack than it ever was for me to gain followers on instagram. Ridiculous that I stayed there for so many years.
Great to see you here ! Your podcast got me through a lot of the pandemic. Loved it. Excited for the new phase.
Oh that’s awesome! New episodes will be dropping this year, right here on substack :)
Loved this post, David! I always get so hyped up when other “creators” (I’m so tired of that word lol) share about their journeys off of social media - Instagram in particular - especially when they’ve built a significant following. Reading about others experiences with completely validates and normalizes my own. I ESPECIALLY love the few things you wrote about short-form “junk food” vs long-term nourishment. This is literally all I think about all day long 🤣 I JUST hit publish on a post & voiceover yesterday morning that almost read like spoken word at times where I professed my undying love for the slow creative process (painting, art, video) that so many creative souls feel pressured to compromise in order to capture people’s attention. I too saw very fast account growth with Reels in 2020, but then promptly stopped once I realized it was hurting my creative integrity and storytelling. My Instagrowth stagnated completely, and it sorta felt like I faded into obscurity. The scariest part is, I tried to hard to convince my Instagram followers to follow/watch/subscribe elsewhere; but wholey shit, it’s like they’re all sleepwalking zombies! It’s like pulling teeth trying to get them to commit to reading something longer, watching something longer, listening to something longer… it makes me so sad, social media addiction is like some weird mental virus that completely messes with people’s brains. I feel like I’m starting over here on Substack as well, although I did manage to at least bring SOME Instagram peeps over…. But my word, it was difficult. Anyway, this post fired me up lol. My newsletter here on Substack is supposed to be about dogs and animals and nature and stuff, but I just simply CANNOT stop writing and talking about creativity and the state of social media right now, it’s just pouring out of me. Big congrats on the decision to walk away from Insta with a significant following - absolutely an act of creative rebellion! 🔥🔥🔥
Hey Brandy. It often feels so lonely and then I read your reply and realise that there are others in the exact same boat. I’ve managed to import 200 followers over here so I’d say you’re doing really well with 2k! Maybe have two publications , one for the creativity bits? So glad you’ve thrown yourself into it!
(…it’s this one ☺️)
Yes!! I do - I started another one called All In One Breath with Gritty Gracious JUST so I could talk about creativity and social media, I just haven’t had the time to do anything with it yet haha. I started it on a completely separate account so I could share notes that were only about social media addiction (I shared your post and a quote from you over there yesterday 😄) Looking forward to following along with your journey!
I’m feeling the same way. I started writing about it and we’re taking this month to investigate our relationship with social media on my sub stack. This week was journal prompts, last week was a resource dump of all the things I’ve been reading that I’ve found helpful as I examine my relationship with it.
This isn’t meant to be a plug for my substack, rather that there seems to be a larger trend of people leaving the social media platforms. I spoke to a stranger today about how they didn’t have social media (this was a more “conventional” person too - an elementary teacher).
You know, I haven’t seen your posts on Insta for a while and you’re not the only person I follow on there who seems to have disappeared from my feed in recent months. Fortunately, I live in Shoreditch so I get to see your work all the time. It brightens my day, so thank you.
I feel everything you’ve said, and I only have 1,200 followers. I’m a singer, and we are expected to do the same short videos, but I am so sick of it and just can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to even post anything! It’s a chore.
Yeah I’ve been gradually ridding myself of social media. I was banned from Twittwr and I just couldn’t warm to Insta- felt i always needed a photo and sometimes I just didn’t feel I had one. All the platforms are about money- even this one, sadly. That’s why they are so keen on telling us how to increase our subscription rate, convert them to paid. It’s all about a piece of the pie….always. And it’s all about whether what we gain outweighs what we dislike. For now i like it here but who’s to say how it will go in the future.