Real talk. It’s been a minute since I’ve felt motivated to post much of anything on social media — specifically Instagram — and it seems I’m not the only one, judging by the response on @illumitati’s recent post. “Make instagram instagram again,” she wrote. “Stop trying to be tiktok I just want to see cute photos of my friends. Sincerely, everyone.” Sincerely, EVERYONE. The post has blown up on my stories — share after share of people screaming Preach, shouting Louder For the People-Slash-Meta-Executives in the Back.
I shared it too, because I feel it hard. When started my “Instamom” account in 2016 (shoutout all my OG @tojaneandrose followers), Instagram was a pretty magical place. I made lifelong friendships, developed creatively, and documented my girls’ baby-and-toddlerhoods until they were no longer babies or toddlers, until they were kids who were no longer interested in being documented. But even if they were interested, even if I still had the stamina for documentation, Instagram is no longer a magical place. Don’t get me wrong — it delights me beyond belief that my explore page is filled with embroidery tutorials and the Stranger Things kids dancing together with Vecna in their kitchens. But creating reels makes my brain bleed. I’m tired of feeling like I can’t post a picture to my feed unless it’s an absolute banger. In the end it’s hard to invest energy into a social space that is no longer actually social — a space where the platform hides my posts from my friends and my friends’ posts from me.
Part of me wants to wash my hands of the internet at large. Delete all my accounts and flee to the woods, spend the rest of my days reading novels with my face to the sun. The other part of me is a social creature, and even worse: a *creative* social creature, which means I have a need to create work, and a need to share that work, and also share in general, about the things I’ve always shared about — arts, crafts, kids, books, parties, holidays, home, fashion — on a platform where community is available but my content is not discounted by an algorithm hungry for divisiveness and misinformation.
So! Here I am on substack trying to get my groove back. Please subscribe to Bubblegum! I have a lot of ideas of what I’d like to cover and talk about so I’ll share those in the next post or two. 2009 Kristen is very excited about returning to blogging and thinks this is going to be great.
Thx so much for reading this far and in advance for subscribing. Y’all are the best, xo!!
kristen
yes! cheers to all of this. i miss the ole google reader days… also, i very much remember feeling envious during personalized bendy straw infomercials.