Instagram is Changing… Does that Make me Old?

Gone are the days when the curated, overly-filtered, perfect photos rack up the likes. For someone who loves the platform and is on it for more than I would like to admit, hearing, reading and seeing this news shocked me. I had noticed the trend, but living in denial I didn’t want to admit it. I had first heard about it on marketing platform that shared this article, “The Instagram Aesthetic is Over.”

Essentially what this article said, is that the trends that the users of the platform wants are unfiltered, un-curated, real, images. Or at least that’s the way we want them to look. That’s not shocking news to me - we, as humans, crave authenticity even through a digital platform. And how exhausting is it to scroll through and see the same photo from every girl on the platform. There has to be a way to stand out. The way that people are finding their niche is now by doing quirky things - taking photos with flash, mirror selfies are coming back, and weird faces are the new normal. But still, I didn’t want to believe it to be true.

I loved the OG aesthetic. Maybe I’m stubborn (my mom would agree) but truth be told, my posts weren’t performing as well as they normally do. I just blamed it on the algorithm & decided “I’m posting on here because I want to, not because I need validation from my audience” and didn’t think to hard about it.

I didn’t believe it until I posted this picture:

Me sitting in a doctor’s office with a cut finger and BOOM - it’s the most engagement I’ve gotten in a long time. Truth be told, I cut my finger DIY-ing some jeans and I overreacted and went to urgent care. I was embarrassed when the nurse told me that it was a paper cut (was completely healed two days later) but I posted the picture my friend took as a way to cope & make a joke out of my situation. I didn’t think twice about it until days later people were asking me how my figure was doing… I realized that the Atlantic article was right… people like the quirkiness. They like the mundane everyday more than the posed photos.

So then it became a challenge for me. How can I capture the everyday moments without it being cliche - it’s still pretty hard, posed & filtered but in a different style.

I don’t think it always works, but my audience, much like me, still loves the more traditional aesthetic. The younger generation will think this is normal and at some point, the trends will probably come back to what we know and love. It’s interesting to see that while social media is newer than a lot of things has evolved over time and changed to meet the needs of the cultural climate, but still holds true to human nature.

Anyway that’s my deep thought for the day. Follow me @gellykordon if you want to keep up and see how much of a nerd I am with social & maybe get a chuckle from my captions.