Category: Technology

This life I lead.
It appears to you as a picture book of magical moments
A scrolling rainbow of colours
Captured through luck and maybe even a bit of talent
Precision and a dose of happenstance
And from the outside, it looks picture perfect.
But what if I told you it was all a beautiful illusion?
What if I told you…
That behind every image..
Every video..
Every moment I’ve ever captured
Is an entire world you won’t ever see
Hours spent researching, processing, editing, enhancing
Standing in the rain
the snow
the dust
the mud
All to be in the perfect place
At the perfect time
To find that perfect angle
So that you might for a moment believe that this is my reality
That the likes are the metric by which I measure my success
And that my perspective is only as wide as my camera lens
When perhaps this reality
Is an illusion we’ve chosen for ourselves
A convincing one
A persistent one
And we’re looking at the stars reflected into our eyes from a glossy black mirror
Instead of the stars in the night sky
Wondering why we can’t see the light any more

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Instagram ins’t real. We all know that.

And yet our self esteem can live and die by the number of likes and comments we get.

How strange that we’ve choose a virtual world as the place our self worth now lives.

Instagram is hiding likes

This week, Instagram took the bold step of rolling out it’s plan to ‘hide likes’ on pictures in more than six countries.

Maybe it’s a good thing.

Orrrr maybe it won’t change anything at all.

But it’s a step, perhaps even one in the right direction.

By maybe we’re the problem?

It’s never a bad thing when a large and influential company takes a positive stance on a serious issue (i.e. mental health and self-worth) by actually putting their money where their mouth is and taking legitimate action to be a part of the solution.

I can’t help but wonder if Instagrm is the problem here though? Surely we are, the users, the consumers, the voyeurs are? Shouldn’t we be are the ones responsible for our consumption of media and the effect it has on us?

Or perhaps it’s not as simple as that.

Either way.

Only time will tell if it will have an impact.

I hope it does. I really do.