In the last couple of months, I have decreased my usage of Instagram.
It was not a conscious decision, at first: I was busy building writing materials for my blogs, and I started a couple of meaningful collaborations (with
, , and Biztronomy) and I was busy with other gastronomic projects.Abandoning it was a creeping process, built on slow disengagement.
I started decreasing my time spent with Instagram as I increased my time spent here, for instance: not only by publishing less and less there but also by reading/seeing fewer and fewer posts.
And as Instagram actively punishes its users, showing them just a fraction of the accounts followed in lieu of an endless stream of unknown publicity accounts, I did not feel I was missing out.
I am all hooray for these small entrepreneurs, new restaurants and cafés, apparently infinite small-line tattoo artists, photographers, knitters and whatnot that pop up on my page, uncalled for and undesired.
I cheer for you and your business, only I have no interest in it and I’d rather have a look at what one of the pages I actually follow is doing.
Instagram has become like Vogue, the magazine. Somewhere in between a million edited pictures of uninteresting clothes and perfumes are some valuable things. However, I can’t be bothered to turn all those pages in search of something, and I don’t feel that the effort is worth it.
Then, one weekend in early fall, I took the decision to pull all my 5,000 pictures from Instagram.
Bam! Done.
They are archived, and only I and Mark Zuckerberg’s minions can access them - for now.
Pictures, moments, beloved texts that I wrote over the years and are the witness to my gastronomic journey - and my life.
I just did not want others to see them, unseen.
Does it make sense?
While you can see how many people - and to an extent, who - saw your story, you cannot with an Instagram post. But you can know how many people saw a Substack post: and even if there is no reaction to it, you know at least your subscribers have had the chance to see it - be it in the app, or via mail.
Your voice was not drowned out in a stream of publicity and short video advertisements.
Until the pandemic, Instagram was still a place for exchange: people would comment on each other’s posts and there was a dialogue ongoing, albeit scattered.
With the tiktokization of Instagram, dialogue was silenced.
Video killed the image, and the writing was collateral damage.
We can say that Instagram was the place where the foodie-fication of society took place: we all collectively started posting pictures of food - my own very first picture in 2012, was of a perfectly whipped chai latte in Delft.
Name a better cliché!
However, some months later I decided to place some pictures of me on the Instagram wall, and use it in a blended way: I put stories there, and mixed them with articles from the blog with their links: the visualisations this way do not drop, and I can continuously lure new reader here.
Of course, I still follow and see some other people’s accounts. Here below, are my favorite Instagram accounts in 2023 and the reasons why.