Question 548: Facebook or Instagram (and why…)
It’s no secret I’m not a Facebook fan. After the 2016 election, I unfriended everyone except my writing partners, and the only reason I kept the account is because Tim and I share a writers’ page on there. I never close the door on editing another anthology with him, should the opportunity arise.
Please note, I didn’t unfriend everyone because of the people whose views differ from mine, including friends and family members who voted for Trump. I didn’t want to read anyone’s views on politics after that election. If I want that, I go to Twitter in very limited doses, mostly to find out what people are talking about, then I go elsewhere to get a more in-depth story.
The only thing I miss about Facebook is the posts of my nieces and nephews and grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Most of them ended up on Instagram, where I’d already had an account.
As for Instagram, even though I know it’s owned by Facebook, which I have distanced myself from even further over the last four years, it’s about people’s photos and not about their text. Some of the accounts I follow are very political, but I only follow the ones that won’t agitate me. I think I probably got an Instagram account because Aaron had one, and he introduced me to the app.
What I most enjoy are the photographic glimpses into their lives that people provide. The stuff that bores some people doesn’t bore me. I like their animals, their meals, their homes, what they see on any given day, their art, their kids, their music (both what they compose and what they listen to), the books they read, the places they travel, their lives. I like the visuals and appreciate their willingness to share. Plus I have fun with my own account on Instagram. I practically stopped using my camera when I was taking several hundred rescue animal photos a week, so the phone camera became a quick and easy way for me to record what I’m doing. The same way this blog has served as a kind of memoir since 2004, Instagram has provided a visual memoir since 2012.
I think this is my first Instagram post on April 14, 2012, Pixie and Penny on our bed at The Compound.
I like Instagram more too. I think you get a view of real life Instagram. And pictures can sooth me, I look at a lot of journals I have been checking facebook less and less, but there are people I only see there
What still makes me shake my head all these years later is how many people took it personally that I stopped FBing. I post every day right here. All I was doing was linking to this blog. It takes seconds to pull up the blog and decide whether to read or look at what I post. If someone comments or wants to interact with me here, it’s a simple process, and I rarely don’t respond to someone.
If I’m not worth a minute or two of someone’s time now and then, my going away from FB was never about me. It was about them. I regretted their hurt feelings, but I had to make a choice. Stay upset and stirred up constantly about all those things I didn’t want to see (and it wasn’t just politics, it was constant horror stories about animals, as another example), or let it all go. I chose to let it all go, and I’m betting my eyes or comments on their FB posts were not missed in the slightest.
Instagram == Facebook. To me they are the same, so neither.
For a while, until Yahoo! and Verizon got on the way, I preferred Flickr of days gone bye. But, Getty needed to get give the photographer some credit, money, recognition, which is seldom the case. It’s usually “Source: Getty Images.” That’s it.
In many ways, I celebrated the pending death of Yahoo! (sic) !!! I left that when other webmail services including Universties just didn’t have bouncing adverts all over the only reason I was there in the first place which had absolutely NOTHING to do with those bounsing adverts distracting me and later normally preventing me from what I was trying to do. Why put up with that nonsense?
Facebook, was merely an extension to the High School Yearbook. It was also the click bait for freshmen hook up so that you can easily pretend you like what that hot person likes and maybe get in their bed. Facebook in a University Library was normally left logged-on! But I would just type in a “note-to-“self”” saying please remember to log-out or risk someone else taking over your account. It’s still has the same fidelity of privacy and security than those early days, and people actually trust it as a sign-on alternative. Also, the user interface, I found depressing, because people would talk in terse all the time. So, there was no point for me to be there, when I could just substitute ASCII and Pixels with Actual Person-to-Person Interaction (GASP! HORROR!)
Flickr bewilders me. Every tweak and upgrade they make to it makes it a less appealing, less user-friendly app. We merely co-exist now. It’s the repository for all the photos that go here on my blog.
I deleted my Facebook account around eight years ago, when I realised that ‘friends only’ didn’t mean friends only. I don’t have Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter – or anything. Social media is bad for my mental health.
It’s a shame. It should be a good way to connect. It’s been ruined by bad players–both in those who develop and maintain it, and those who use it.