Instagram made it everyone's job
Instagram turned self-presentation into a copying practice. The app did not watch you into behaving. It gave you earlier posts to copy and a score to judge the copy.
Instagram spread this to the rest of us, roughly between 2012 and 2018.
Instagram spread this to the rest of us, roughly between 2012 and 2018.
The look arrived first from a small group. Fashion bloggers and early lifestyle accounts set the rules: the flat photo from above, the golden-hour portrait, the engagement carousel. Then everyone copied them.
Within a few years the pattern was everywhere. People made engagement photos that copied engagement photos that copied engagement photos. The pile of earlier examples grew thicker every month.
At the time this looked like a drive for self-improvement. The tidy kitchen counter. The perfect coffee. The Greek island in soft light. It was really a copying practice. Each post was a small copy, made against a shared set of examples everyone could see.
Supplying the examples to copy and the score to judge the copy, with no.
Instagram spread this to the rest of us, roughly between 2012 and 2018.
Fashion bloggers and early lifestyle accounts set the rules: the flat photo from above, the golden-hour portrait, the engagement carousel.
People made engagement photos that copied engagement photos that copied engagement photos.
The app did not scare you into behaving. It did two simpler things. It gave you the earlier posts to copy. And it gave you a score to judge your copy: likes, follows, saves.
And there was never a point of enough. The keen amateur turns professional. The professional gets paid. The paid account becomes the template. The template is what the next person copies.
This is why the celebrity creator who turned fully into a brand is admired. That is simply what this game looks like when it grows to scale.
Fashion bloggers and early lifestyle accounts set the rules: the flat photo from above, the golden-hour portrait, the engagement carousel.
Supplying the examples to copy and the score to judge the copy, with no point of enough.
Instagram turned self-presentation into a copying practice. The app did not watch you into behaving. It gave you earlier posts to copy and a score to judge the copy.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “Palimpsest self, parasocial media”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
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