As much as I love to deny my millennial obsession with social media, I can’t help it: I’m addicted to Instagram. My inner amateur photographer is fulfilled with each cropped photo and artsy filter. Double tapping photos of my friends’ pictures at brunch or celebrities looking flawless gives me immense joy. Accepting follow requests is the perfect boost to keep my ego afloat, but not too high.
But in the same way that seeing my number of followers rise supplies a nice kick of positivity, opening my Instagram app and noticing a decrease in followers sends me into a spiral of dark insecurity makes me a little upset. Now I admit – I’m a perfectly healthy, self-loving human being who has enough self-confidence to make me feel like a winner even when a guy turns me down at a party or I get a bad grade on a test. But there are plenty of little things that still make me feel a tad insecure. One of them, being when my number of Instagram followers goes down.
And I’m not just talking losing one or two followers. No; I mean opening the app one day to see you have 235 followers, then checking it the next day and seeing the number drop down to 230. Then lower. And lower and lower until you question if there are other forces at play, because why else would all your devoted fans give up the opportunity to take a peek into your (hopefully) creative and interesting picturesque lifestyle?
So to all the people who have randomly decided to follow, then unfollow me on Instagram, I have one question for you:
What the fuck?
First of all, I have (or had, since I very recently changed the settings on my account) a private Instagram. Which means that you had to request to view my photos, wait for my approval, and then throw your arms up in excitement when you got a notification saying that I had approved your follow request. You asked to follow me first. If you didn’t want to follow me in the first place, why did you even bother asking? That’s like deciding to order a huge meal at The Cheesecake Factory, eating a huge hunk of cheesecake, then dashing out before the waiter can bring you the check. It’s rude, it’s cheap, and you’re the only one who benefits from the exchange of seeing my photos for some time until you unfollow me, while I have to deal with my demons of self-doubt coming up with a myriad of reasons why you suddenly decided to abandon me.
Also, why now? Why is it that people always unfollow me on the most baffling occasions? Why do you people randomly decide to unfollow me? Was the last photo of my frozen yogurt too much for you to handle? Did I post one too many #mcm’s? Are you one of those pretentious photo freaks who doesn’t approve of my old-timey-looking filters?
Or is it something beyond that? Did I suddenly become too “uncool” for you to harbor on your “Following” list? Are you ashamed of the girl who posts pictures of food every week? Do you disapprove of the grainy selfies I like to post? Was my lack of the little blue check box verification icon a signal for you to tap the green follow bar until it became white again?
Excuse me. It’s my Instagram account – I can run it however the fuck I want to!
One day, when I’m famous and do have that little blue check box verification icon next to my name, and I’m posting just as many terrible quality pictures of my face in the morning and Starbucks cups, you’ll regret this. I promise you.
(And thus I make a silent vow to become more famous than all the people who unfollowed me on Instagram.)
Image via.
