I am so not "getting" this Instagram thing / do you guys want to look at each others pictures?

MattKKK's advice looks good - I should at least try that.

I've seen a few different folks in my feed mentioning it, but apparently the major labels (esp. Warner) are really stepping up the crackdown on including even a snippet of their music in a post or story.

Time to turn off suggested posts. Oh no, although I hate baseball and golf I'm a mere human who is easily distracted by moving images so now I must be force fed baseball and golf clips ad infinitum!

yeah suggested posts in the app (and the ads) are very annoying. I find the web browser experience is much better

instagram appears to be transforming into a lame version of tiktok? every third post is a video? thanks i hate it

the new UX pretty much killed my already withered interest in it

I still don't get it. Have never tried using it on a phone though.

I follow some interior design Instas and a few have been doing videos and commenting "insta says I need to do more reels/videos etc to get my followers up" but it totally does not work when you're trying to look at the nice cornicing in someone's living room. But I guess the algorithm wants what the stupid algorithm wants.

I don't really understand the difference between reels and videos, but I have definitely gotten myself stuck in terrible timewarps scrolling through random suggested reels, most of which are not even particularly entertaining. It's like they have an addictive substance in them but one that doesn't actually cause pleasure, just pure distraction.

Like eating chips

Yeah, like bad chips. Like a plain old bag of Lays.

Some of them are at least like a cool dunk or an attractive person doing something or other, but a lot of them are just like "Here are questions people always ask me and my twin" or someone lipsynching a movie or tv quote I don't recognize.

I don't get the different types either. I see Stories or whatever appears at the top and it's often a long series of single posts which I'd rather just look at in my normal feed? I get it if it's related/ telling a story kind of thing but often it's not. And then is it time limited? Or can I go back to their feed and see it in a few months' time? IDGI.

I can't explain why, but Instagram's stab at being TikTok just ain't working.

There's something just a little too saccharine, just a little too pandering, about those videos or reels or whatever that makes it lose any air of authenticity. I'm making this up, but like "Hey, kids! Ya like those TikTok challenges? Well here's one – try juggling three balls at once!"

Insta also weirding me out by suggesting videos of cats that look exactly like my cat.

I see Stories or whatever appears at the top and it's often a long series of single posts which I'd rather just look at in my normal feed?

Yes! And I don't even know what a reel is. I mostly follow artists and they've been complaining for ages about how the algorithm totally sucks, I finally get it.

I can't explain why, but Instagram's stab at being TikTok just ain't working.

There's something just a little too saccharine, just a little too pandering, about those videos or reels or whatever that makes it lose any air of authenticity. I'm making this up, but like "Hey, kids! Ya like those TikTok challenges? Well here's one – try juggling three balls at once!"

― pplains, Tuesday, July 19, 2022 10:28 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I'm only slightly familiar with tiktok and have never had the app, but it does almost feel like instagram deliberately recruited "content creators" to make a lot of these and had some committee approve them, because they're just SO safe and formulaic.

I don't see much TikTok-style stuff on my suggested Insta posts - but they are ALL OVER facebook. Can barely use that stupid site any more (have to occasionally).

oh yeah I get them on fb too. Actually sometimes I don't even notice if I'm in instagram or fb when I'm seeing them.

Ha, on my Facebook feed now 'How to use Instagram for business' ad. I doubt that's a coincidence.

I doubt it will shock anyone but I was banned from Insta for arguing with a troll. I assume they abused the report function somehow but the process is completely opaque, and I’ve had trolls level the most hateful racist etc garbage against me and reported them with no effect. Just more evidence to me of how toxic Insta is, they seem to go out of their way to reward the bad actors. (At least it’s not Reddit where the bad actors are obviously running most of the show now.)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfMPGWklH1b/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I feel like this one perfectly encapsulates the impossible blandness of these reels. Like I feel like the people who made this are pod people.

is there another social app that does what og ig did? just one pic and no videos/ads? i just get angry when i open the ig app now, what a mess

Youtube/Instagram seem to compete to see who can more aggressively ignore the "this doesn't interest me" function - any engagement is engagement so here are more self-help/rise and grind/dead-eyed soulless dance posts for you.

I only use TikTok to share animal videos with friends and it seems to still be pretty functional on that point.

There was a couple that posted dances about the husband's porn addiction that were incredible, he looked like he was in a proof of life hostage video. Then I saw in the comments that she was running classes on overcoming your partner's porn addiction so it was all just part of a grift that can't be making more than $20 a month.

it’s kind of incredible that IG now has three different mechanisms for posting, each with its own name, in an effort to keep up with tiktok, which sensibly has just one

if your app has “i’m not interested in this” buttons your app’s algo is not good enough imo (or your investors are pushing you too far down the monetisation funnel)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfMPGWklH1b/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y🕸=

I feel like this one perfectly encapsulates the impossible blandness of these reels. Like I feel like the people who made this are pod people.

https://www.instagram.com/lanasator/?hl=en

One of my favorite accounts, a photographer who documents buildings and ruins in the former Soviet Union. I've seen gofundme posts about legal assistance for someone in prison in Albania and thought it was her friend... it's actually the photographer. The gofundme was shut down because of the sanctions against Russia but apparently a youtuber is helping at least.

i've gone very briefly, very minor viral twice over the past month with something like 3500 accounts hit for two random short reels of pottery. no idea why those are the ones that clicked!

that recently happened to me too but i think it was all fake. 1700 accounts apparently saw me reading a poem, and 12 accounts "liked" it. no one's that bad at poetry, so i figured some sort of next-gen spam content farm accidentally targeted me for views

but yours have hundreds of "likes", so that seems real! :) pot it up!

it's weird. pointless dopamine hits over unfinished work.

the problem is that they're not always pointless. every once in a while, a stranger rando will say something really nice and it's pretty cool!

(of course, then it usually turns out that the rando is wearing a bikini in the profile pic and for some reason desperately wants me to click a link to see more pics)

i like to be liked like everyone else but it's like if i flawlessly whistled the andy griffith theme song on a crowded bus and then everyone applauded. yes that's nice but it don't really help me in any way.

🔥🔥🔥 promote it on @onlygriffiththings

i got 82 opiebucks to spend on amplification

recently i thought i had ran across what i thought was a real person on instagram who was a fan of what i was making. she had actual comments that made sense and asked some questions about process and that kind of thing. i looked at her profile and saw that all of her pictures were pretty standard vacation photos, but that all of them from the last 2 months had many hundreds of "likes" and very generic comments (🔥🔥 to a photo of a wine glass on a table). and then, from the period just before that, they all had maybe 5 likes or 12 or 15. a normal amount. so i think she probably just bought a bunch of spam followers, as certain people on instagram like to do, i guess. but still, she was kind and complimentary to me and was asking real questions, so whatever.

then she asked where i lived and if she could visit and i blocked her. wtf is wrong with instagram

social media in general is ridiculous and toxic and i shouldn't be using it at all but i make these things and i want people to see the things i made

then she asked where i lived and if she could visit and that's how your mother and I first met..

Mine is set to private and will stay that way. If you want to see me you have to ask me to be let through the door. I will never go viral and receive only the most modest dopamine from posting to people who know me irl (mostly). It’s totally fine and I don’t really get spammers or scammers as of this posting.

the problem is that they're not always pointless. every once in a while, a stranger rando will say something really nice and it's pretty cool!

(of course, then it usually turns out that the rando is wearing a bikini in the profile pic and for some reason desperately wants me to click a link to see more pics)

― Karl Malone

with my friends it's the same except it's chasers who want to send them pictures of their cocks

instagram is the only public social media most of my friends use tho for whatever reason

I can't even imagine how bad an Albanian jail is, hope they're released shortly

i can't imagine albanian jails either... whenever i try i just think of the season one simpsons episode "The Crepes of Wrath".

i wish they'd been more familiar with albania, god, they could have done an amazing send-up of hoxhaism. hell, maybe they _did_ do a send-up of hoxhaism sometime during season 27. nobody will ever know.

I think the new Australian PM is from there.

Is it me, or is Instagram suddenly full of ads and random accounts and videos as such?

It’s becoming a lot like another platform …

It's not new, but yes. Hit the logo in the top left and choose 'following' to get rid of all (or most) of the rubbish. You have to do this every time you open the app.

Thanks!

Facebook being nothing but scammy ads and suggested posts makes sense because everyone I actually know has stopped posting there (I have to keep it for work) but Meta fucking up Instagram in the same way has been impressive.

The instagram image editor seems to have gone to shit - if I'm posting multiple images (as I usually do) then if I move one image in the viewport so it's centred where I want it to be, when I go to the next image the first one just resets itself. The last one edited works - so posting single images is fine.

I tend not to post multiple images, partly because they have to follow the same aspect ratio (and I think I've had this issue you're reporting), and also because there's a loss of quality (or used to be).
This probably makes my feed extra tedious, as I just post 5-6 images from the same place all the time.

I like DIY and "slow fashion" trends but let's just say that "cottage core" is not something I want to see...

As bad as coastal mom.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRsrsShs/