My @cottonnoodle Instagram account in November 2024.
Alternatively titled: Stepping away from toxic content culture. Or: The dangers of consuming too much content aimed at Instagram marketers.
I’m not leaving Instagram, but I’ve re-evaluated my relationship with it. Over the last couple of years, I’ve felt shackled by content culture, and it became very toxic.
A lot of this is my fault because I watched a lot of Instagram marketing content that was aimed at small businesses and influencers who use Instagram as a marketing tool. Candidly, this is because I was thinking of starting a small business (but I’m not anymore). The trouble with watching all these Instagram marketing tutorials is that they blurred my understanding of what Instagram is for. They made me think that the goal of using the platform is to increase your following for its own sake.
My follower count is 1713 at the time I write this, so not a huge number by Instagram standards, but I did work for it. This number became gamified, it became something I needed to min/max. I started feeling like my posts had “failed” if I did not gain followers.
Earlier this year, I took about 9 months off posting to Instagram. This actually wasn’t an intentional hiatus - the entire time, I was thinking about what I should post next, and feeling more and more anxious about how to address the hiatus when I returned. I overthought it. This is when I came to realise how unhealthy my relationship with Instagram was.
Instagram felt bad
Guilt when not taking photos of things I’ve made. And guilt when not sewing things in the first place! As if my sewing hobby only exists to feed the Instagram algorithm.
Fear of the algorithm penalising me if I don’t post often enough, or if I post erratically.
Pressure to make “relatable” “authentic” content ie. to be vulnerable in ways I’m not necessarily comfortable being online. But on the flip side, also pressure to make perfect content. Which resulted in photo shoots and editing taking hours.
Pressure to show behind the scenes and works in progress. Not that I don’t want to share this, but stopping to make content interferes with sewing, which is my actual hobby.
Pressure to write quippy, concise captions. The number of captions I’ve written that have been many paragraphs long… and that then got edited down out of concern that I’m being too wordy for the platform. I’m wordy, goddamnit! And I have a lot to say about my projects!
Pressure to create reels - oh god, reels. Yes, the Instagram algorithm favours video content over photos and carousels. Does that mean I want to make video content? No. Do I find it so much hard work, and inauthentic to myself? Yes. Did I feel the immense pressure to convert to producing reels instead of images? Oh yes.
So what changes now?
Creating this blog, and its shiny new gallery, instantly changed how I feel about producing “content”. Now that I’m thinking of this place as my home on the internet, and thinking of my gallery as my official public record of what I’ve made, I no longer have to treat Instagram as those things. Which takes some of the perfectionism pressure off. Incidentally, a lot of these same feelings had applied to blogging too (I’d started worrying rather a lot about SEO). I’ve already successfully let go of that, so Instagram is next.
I’m throwing away any desire to please the Instagram algorithm. I’m going to “destroy my feed”, Wreck This Journal-style, by intentionally disregarding its perfectionism and cohesiveness, and turning it into something more casual. I want to use it as a space to communicate and connect with others, not to collect imaginary internet points. I have no predictions for what it will look like. But it’s probably going to be a lot wordier, a lot weirder, and a lot less polished. And I’m going to stop feeling so damn guilty about it!
(An aside about marketing for others: I am conscious that I share “influencer-lite” content, with my pattern testing, and the occasional gifted patterns and fabric that I get sent. None of that is going to change - supporting small businesses that I care about is important to me. I understand what I’m participating in here. This article is to do with the fact that I’m no longer marketing me.)
Whew - writing this post has felt like a therapy session! Here’s to a new era of weirdness and authenticity.