If you asked me a few years ago what I thought of Instagram, I couldn’t tell you anything that great. Honestly, pictures never managed to make it into my good graces. Not just because I look like a dehydrated potato in every photo either. (Hey, some people just can’t pull off the photogenic look.) But mostly because I carry an old—more like ancient—soul within me, and I always felt myself slightly raising my nose up at taking the time to take a photo and post it. Except that over the years I came to realize something.
Instagram doesn’t equal insignificance.
I love hiking, and I love walking along the ocean imagining the sunken ships and lost souls in the depths of the blue waters. You know, like any girl my age. Except I realized early on that I never had the same interest in taking pictures of the mountains, skyline or waves. That meant I hated Instagram, right? My mind and soul simply worked at an age beyond social media. A millennial, too old to understand anymore. Gosh darn it.
Then something fascinating happened. I discovered something called bookstagram. I still don’t completely understand how hashtags work, but the setups for these beautiful physical copes of books looked so good that it always made me want to buy it. I loved how people incorporated crowns into their photos, swords, coffee, blankets and flowers. I loved how they could take a simple couple hundred pages of words on paper and make it into a physical representation of a magical world.
I tried it myself a few times, just setting things up and taking photos, and it hit me how much more fun it made reading.
Creating these photoshoots not only made me feel like the process of getting the book felt as much fun as reading it, but it also got me excited to start it. Even better if I finished reading it, because then creating a setup felt like a scavenger hunt for the perfect objects that represented the story. I don’t know, I just felt like taking the time to create a setup at all made me pause to appreciate what I was looking at.
I still don’t love taking photos of landscapes or skies because they never come out as pretty on camera as they look in front of me. With that said, I do feel like other aspects certainly work for me. Which illustrates my point here. When you try to enjoy social media as everyone else enjoys it, you might feel like it lacks any charm for you. The trick comes down to this; you need to learn how to enjoy everything in a way that works for you.
If you feel like skies just don’t look right on your screen, then don’t take the photo, no matter what the rest of Instagram posts.
If you enjoy setups that take longer and more effort because they make something feel more fun or glamorous, do that then! If you feel like photos make a moment more important, take as many as you’d like. But if you feel like they don’t, then don’t. Don’t dismiss other people’s appreciation for Instagram and posting photos online, because while it might turn special events insignificant to you, they might make those special events worth it to somebody else.
Modern day tools don’t equal inferiority. You don’t value your loved ones less now because you can text them instead of waiting for their handwritten letter. Hiking up a mountain doesn’t suddenly become meaningless because you share those photos with your friends online. We put a lot of stock in photos now, true. However, I think that comes down more to the fact that we can take so many photos now. We carry tools with us that allow us to take so many pictures in a way earlier generations couldn’t. Personally, I don’t find any problem with taking advantage of humanity’s technological advances. They don’t all need to fly to the moon for me to consider them impressive.
