My complicated history with a dopamine-fueled best frenemy

Are you using Instagram or is it using you?

Photo by lalo Hernandez on Unsplash

Waxing

Before I worked as a designer, I read and wrote about Tarot for a living. More profitably, I helped other Tarot readers to utilize digital marketing. How could one sustain such a strange living?

Instagram, of course.

Myths and stories were my first childhood love, and psychological archetypes were a natural progression of that love in my adult years. The symbols of the Tarot gave me a cohesive framework for sharing esoteric Jungian ideas in an understandable and meaningful way.

I decided to start publishing about Tarot and mysticism on Instagram. Ideas that once lay latent and awkward in my brain poured forth onto the page with ease and cohesion.

I had finally found a sense of meaning in my work. Wildly, others found meaning in it too.

When I realized Tarot content actually had legs, I took a more tactical approach to Instagram. I analyzed niche accounts that were larger than mine. I studied copywriting. I developed a brand voice, and targeted specific business outcomes.

Larger accounts that served the same group of millennial women took notice and shared my content. My account took off.

Waning

I grew to about 10,000 followers, and formed a new community of friends, online and in person. Right around that same time, burnout started to nip at my heels.

Despite my restraint in what I shared, everything I experienced became possible fodder for the feed. Was it aesthetic enough? Could I use this for content?

I would be enjoying dinner with loved ones and reflexively wonder if I should capture the details on camera, for the ‘gram.

I could hear the narrative Instagram content voice in my head, arranging and rearranging the moment into a caption. When I noticed this habit, I hated it.

That voice—the Instagram content voice—had a life of her own, and it wasn’t mine.

That voice wrote with the distinct awareness of others, conforming to the audience and the algorithm. The reward for this conformity is more dopamine, more reach, and since I was selling services, more money.

Dopamine is a hell of a drug. Product teams call their customers “users.” I was using heavily; my brain seemed to be running a program that I didn’t code. The app started using me.

Waking

In my content, I was careful to never explicitly reveal what I really thought. The audience I had attracted was mostly women of a mixed political perspectives, and I couldn’t bear the thought of being disliked by a single one of them. [Recovering people pleasers, unite!]

But I didn’t actually have to worry about some unhinged stranger yelling at me on the internet, because I did the work for them: I censored myself.

Self-censorship snuffs the muse. She refuses to hide alongside you. If you want to create compelling work, you must show up fully, with a lionhearted vulnerability.

Instead, I hid. I used transcendent and vague spiritual language so the reader could project their own version of social righteousness onto my content. My public thoughts had an Instagram filter on them: airbrushed, sanitized, not quite real.

I was no longer guided by the free-ranging, curious internal voice of my authentic self. My creativity had been captured by an algorithm, and an (increasingly ideologically-possessed) audience.

Externally, I was ready to move on to a new medium: my design career was ramping up, the pandemic would soon unfold and a year later, pregnant and fierce, I would wake up in the middle of the night, ready to break the spell of social media conformity. At five in the morning, under a near full moon, I wrote and published an essay that would eject me from the real-life and online communities built around my insta-persona.

Walking

Internet drama can feel traumatic. Ask my therapist. Nearly two years later, my heart still twinges when I think about a couple of my real-life friends who simply never spoke to me again.

I don’t care about the rest of it: the 3,000 unfollows, the decline in reach, the sunk efforts, the stuttering and confused state of my once-perfectly curated feed.

None of it matters.

Instagram will ask you to take your most precious wisdom and make it a reel. I am guilty of this silliness. Plus, the endless push to distill one’s persona down to meaningless labels means there are a whole slew of race-essentialist pangender identitarians with Ukraine flag emojis who bitterly reinforce disempowerment as a means of conferring status upon themselves. Go for gold at the Oppression Olympics. Win the most stupid prize. Instagram is the perfect stadium.

When I finally removed the app from my phone, I found my actual and visceral life unfurling beautifully. It was always unfurling beautifully, I just noticed it more.

My own thoughts, free from the frame of the ‘gram began to emerge again, flowing and feral as ever. In the several years, I deprioritized Instagram, I walked more. And talked to my mother more. My relationships improved. I made more money, reached my goals more quickly, and felt more fulfilled overall. We started a family and a homestead. Deleting Instagram from my phone was certainly correlated with a dramatic uptick in well-being and focus.

Working

Yet… I am not holier than thou, the majority of my readers come from Instagram. I still want my words to land on eyeballs. I still want to be connected to others by ideas that transcend geography. I still want to share what I am working on. I still love the offensive memes in my friend chats.

Instagram, I cain’t quit yew.

So, I’m back to posting. Maybe. With a few more boundaries and a looser grip on outcomes. With a watchful eye on my mental habits. With a baby who is no respecter of scrolling, rightfully.

I am still untangling my feelings about my own digital visibility. This remains complicated.

I think the kids might call it a “situationship.” But how the hell would I know, they’re all on TikTok.

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