Some of you may have noticed that I recently disappeared from Instagram. Apparently using a third-party app to get statistics on your account that Instagram does not provide is against its community values. Other platforms encourage or at least allow statistical analysis from third parties, so I find this disappointing and frustrating, but I’m not sure I’m going to appeal the deactivation.

I’m having trouble even retrieving my data from @jukareyote on Instagram, though it is purportedly my right to have. The process to retrieve your data is not as simple as you might expect. I will persist in this, but I may simply let this Instagram proxy for my “self” fall away and either start anew, perhaps in the spring, or simply let it fall away and not return, instead focusing my attention on connections geographically closer to the space my life occupies.

I feel invited at this point to evaluate how well social media supports my embodied life.

I love Instagram in some meaningful ways. I follow some wonderful accounts that post enriching content that I would never have otherwise known about, and I get to see what people I know and love are doing in far corners of the world that I would not otherwise get to see. I also have a window into what issues are most important to people not in my immediate circles of life. These are all valuable to me.

That said, especially since Instagram implemented the algorithms for how it distributes posts, I have found Instagram to be alienating in some meaningful ways. Despite having almost 1000 followers, engagement with my posts dropped dramatically after the algorithm was put into play. I also almost never see the posts of my friends because my feed is inundated with things that the algorithm assumes I want to see: new accounts it wants me to follow based on what I have liked or spent time looking at. This algorithm is human bias simplified (even beyond normal human brain bias) and digitally embodied.

While I do like looking at more content that I like of a certain type, this does not mean that I only want to look at that one type of thing. For example, I don’t want to spend all day watching videos of whales capering about the surface of the sea, though I love witnessing such wonders immensely. My interests are diverse, and some of them are not wildly popular, not for any shadowy reason (although so what if so), but simply because they are not wildly popular. Not all of my friends are influencers, for example. In fact, almost none of them are, but I still very much want to see their content over and above countless wondrous whale videos. However, I now have to search for my friends’ accounts to see if they’ve posted anything I haven’t seen whereas in the past, I would see them in my feed by virtue of following their accounts. 

These are non-trivial concerns for me especially as I have limited energy, which most people can understand. We all have a limited amount of attention to pay in our lives.

And this is all not to mention the fact that the platform can simply take away years of content and connections in a moment. I don’t own my account or its content, some of which I consider art in and of itself. Instagram (Facebook) does, and I have no say in what community values (or other measures or conditions) determine what happens with my account: be it distribution or mere existence. As such, building any part of my life on a social media platform is kind of like building a house upon a sandy beach.

So, with important considerations on both sides of the question, do I stay or do I go now? I’ll take the winter to think about it. I have until the spring to appeal, and I’ll give myself at least that long to decide whether I want to invest so much time and attention into either the same or a new Instagram profile. I tend towards the path of least resistance, and I am leaning towards simply letting it go, but that is not to say I can’t or won’t be compelled to reconnect with who and what Instagram has to offer.

If you have thoughts on this, please do share them. Post a comment, send me an email, or strike up a conversation if you see me around town. Do you miss @jukareyote? Would you like to see me create something new? Or do you salute my retreat into a more local community and investment in more organic connections? How about you? How do you relate to your social media? How does it influence your life? How do you navigate its intricacies and blunt instruments? Or are you happy without it?

For now at least, RIP @jukareyote/instagram.com. Sleep and dream in inspired remembrance.

Thank you to everyone who has followed and engaged with me there. I will remember you, too. You made Instagram a landscape worth treading: a resource of inspiration, human concern, beauty (both simple and complex), understanding, generosity, and connection. Instagram would literally be nothing but an empty building without you. It would not even be a landscape, for you are the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the flowers, the snow, the rising and setting sun, and all the rest.

There is the shadow side of that beauty, too, on Instagram, but in that sense, it is not unlike the “real” human world: a landscape of light and shadow, creation and destruction, hope and despair. I am, on the whole, happy to have had the privilege to witness humanity and the world through your eyes there, and to choose how to contribute, who to connect with, and what to let go of.

With love,

J