(100 Days to offload Day 4)

I admit that I fell prey to the Instagram scam a for a few years. I say a scam, because the idea is out there that Instagram is a good way to promote art or a business, and I don't think it is, not for a small artist anyway. For ten years I did art shows and markets, had an online shop and had social media accounts for my artwork. Social media got me only a handful of sales in a decade. Art shows provided the bulk of my sales, and fueled my online shop as well. Etsy provided some sales through its own search function. But throughout all that, I felt an obligation to promote myself and my work on social media. But I think it was primarily me and other artists all following one another, not reaching new customers and art lovers. I think that shows and markets are the best way to sell and promote and that's what I'll be pursuing again in the future. Even for sharing personal photos, I think it's a bad method, because the feed is so clogged with suggested posts and advertisements.

For a long time I only checked Instagram on my computer but still found I was looking at it too much, and it felt compulsive. I noticed that the number of ads and irrelevant "suggested posts" dramatically increased over time. It feels like more and more of the internet (youtube shorts, for example) is just a ploy to get us to click on random, distracting things.

In order to make the instagram experience somewhat tolerable, I only checked it from a browser or desktop, and I installed a Firefox plug-in, to remove the suggested posts and ads, and switch to a chronological feed, which does help. The funhouse-style distractions, and bells and whistles vying for your attention feels awful, like its goal is to make everyone ADHD under its influence, whether they normally experience ADHD or not. It feels unhealthy and it alarms me that subjecting themselves to these influences is the norm.

As a next step, I am in the process of dismantling my art Instagram account. I exported and downloaded all my data, so I have my images and captions. I am going to add that galley to my website, because it's actually a nice collection of photos. I may put them on Pixelfed as well, but I haven't decided. I unfollowed everyone and I am deleting all of my content. I will just put a message saying to find me elsewhere. That feels more of an active pushback than just deleting my account in case anyone comes looking for me.

The plug-in I have for making the feed chronological and blocking ads and stories is called Antigram, on Chrome. I haven't found a parallel version on Firefox, unfortunately.

If there are accounts you want to cheek, you can use a tool like www.anonyig.com to see stories and posts without an account. I think that's valid if you need to peep at something on Instagram without having a whole account.

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