In Defence Of Instagram

For once, I'm not going to moan about the infamous algorithm! Well, let's see how far I can go without mentioning it in this post...



We had yet ANOTHER Instagram outage the other day, also Facebook and WhatsApp thought they could go one better by doing the same thing on the same day. Tut tut *eye roll*. All I can say is that thank you Twitter for not being an absolute pain in the bum by not having outages left right and centre.

In Defence Of Instagram

This latest breakdown of Instagram was quite a long one, mine (as well as everyone else's I'm assuming) went down from 3pm on the Wednesday afternoon but it didn't return until, well for me, the following Thursday morning. This got me thinking as I got into bed that Wednesday night realising I couldn't do my daily Insta bedtime scroll, should we really tone down our irritation for Instagram?



I know the outages seem to be a regular occurrence with Instagram at the moment, like I said, they are frustrating, especially when you've just posted a photo right before the start of the breakdown *cough cough* like mine did. However, I want you to think about it like this.



Remember when were first introduced to the app? We downloaded it with baited anticipation so we could post our first photo. My first was a picture of my cat Charlie (god rest his soul) sleeping in the weirdest position on the settee. That's how I was going to use Instagram, post pictures that put a wry smile on my face and ones that genuinely just made me happy.

In Defence Of Instagram

Then I became a blogger - and somehow my attitude towards Instagram seemed to change. I cared more about likes and engagement. Then the dreaded algorithm came along (I knew I'd mention it!) after we said a tearful goodbye to the chronological order we favoured so much. It does sound awfully vain and petty of me, or anyone else for that matter, when we say, "Why is no one liking my newest photo?" Say that out loud next time you post something on Insta, you'll fully realise how daft and trivial you sound.



Although, a lot of us put so much effort into creating fabulous content, only for Insta to only show our photo's to a miniscule 5% of our followers. It's so disheartening when you've worked so hard to get the right picture. Especially if you rely on Instagram as your sole income.

In Defence Of Instagram

Instagram was made for us to share our memories of new and old, we shouldn't continue rubbishing the app. Instead we should all remember why we set up an account initially. Ultimately, Instagram is a creative platform made to share videos and photos. That's how it should be for all of us, even those who's Instagram is solely used for their job. Would we still love to hate on Insta if the algorithm wasn't in place? Hmm...I think not. If Instagram still had a chronological order in our feeds, I think we wouldn't be so heinous about the odd outage here and there.



I'm just gonna say it, I still love you Insta, even if you can be a pain in the backside sometimes. I'll still continue to share my memories and promote my blog posts through you. Instagram is my favourite app, alongside Twitter. Right, let's go and upload a new photo, I wonder how many likes I'll get today?

What are your feeling towards Instagram?

Lucy