‘Casual Instagram’ is More Performative Than Ever

It has been over a decade since I made an Instagram account. On the last day of summer camp–when everyone finally got their iPod touches back–we all rushed to make profiles and follow each other so that we could stay connected. Throughout middle school, my Instagram account primarily consisted of memes, One Direction, blurry pictures of random objects, awkward selfies with the “Nashville” filter, or “like for TBH” posts. I must have posted at least five photos a day, but I couldn’t give a care in the world.

As I began high school, Instagram swiftly transformed from a silly online photo album to a meticulously curated visual persona. Instagram was the means by which someone’s popularity transcended from your school to all schools in the vicinity. We modified our first impressions of someone based on their online persona. It wasn’t enough to be attractive; you also had to be “artsy.” Instagram feeds that had a coherent theme and color coordination were often the most followed. Users, myself included, worked tirelessly to maintain a certain “vibe.” I liked how my feed looked... but I loved that others thought so, too.

This era of “performative” Instagram posed its share of challenges. Gen Z, in particular, experienced a heightened desire for unrealistic standards, which led to a spike in mental health issues and eating disorders. With almost ten years of exposure to Instagram, however, I feel like we finally arrived at a point of collective awareness: that our online personas are, indeed, performative. We realized that others’ profiles are merely a highlight reel of our lives. With this shared understanding, in conjunction with Instagram’s removal of the like count in 2019, Instagram was beginning to feel like a healthier online community. Well, until 2020.

Once we were forced into our houses with limited social interaction, a less-glamorous version of our lives became normalized. With no fancy events or trips on people’s calendars, Instagram users were limited with what they could post, particularly influencers, whose incomes were reliant on their profiles. There was no point in fabricating a life that others knew couldn’t exist during this period, so we either had to post ordinary elements of our lives or not post at all. This ushered us into the new era of “Casual Instagram.”

Regarded as the antithesis of what Instagram was pre-COVID, Casual Instagram presents the “spontaneity” of everyday life. “Photo dumps” are a key component of the trend, which consists of “throwing together” unrelated photos in a carousel to showcase every aspect of what a person has been up to. It’s almost as if we’ve gone back to our middle school roots, posting whatever we want (minus the cringe). Casual posting promotes a sense of heightened individuality that Instagram lacked before. It finds beauty in the mundane. While I appreciate the desire for something more casual, Instagram has made me feel worse than ever. It has made me think the mundaneness of my life isn’t good enough.

The problem with Casual Instagram is that authenticity and artificiality are merged together, making it difficult to decipher what is genuine. We aren’t just seeing beautiful photos of our peers on vacation, at a birthday party, or out for dinner; we are seeing everything... Staying in. Wine nights. Interior decor. Half-eaten meals. Candid moments of friends. Car rides. Hot girl walks. Running errands. Almost every aspect of a person’s life is now documented for their followers to see. Regardless of how casual we might perceive this to be, each image in a “photo dump” is still strategically selected to convey a particular identity. For most people, the intended identity is ‘cool’ and ‘carefree.’

Casual Instagram makes expectations run deeper. You need to be beautiful yet effortless. Friendly yet chill. Social yet spontaneous. Messy but funny. Typically ordinary moments must seem eventful. I want to clarify that I am not above this trend; like any online trend, I adopted Casual Instagram almost subconsciously. After noticing how Instagram was making me feel, I started to look inward as to why. I realized that my inner dialogue when posting evolved from “I look good in this photo, and I want people to see it,” to “I want people to see how many friends I have regardless of how lonely I actually feel.”

Perhaps I’m just overly cynical, but most of us can agree that creating a fully authentic online self is, quite frankly, impossible. Instagram has become an oxymoron; we want to appear indifferent to social media, but by doing so, we post something almost every day. The ultimate form of casualness would be not having social media at all, but then, of course, how would anyone know how casual you are?

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