In 2017, I entered the world of Instagram.
That’s seven years after its launch, so you can say I am a late adopter.
My colleague at work encouraged me to be in the space, and I bought into the idea. After creating my account and accessing its main feed, the experience felt like I opened a window to places I could only imagine—seeing photos and videos of places I could only read from books and see in movies.
Everything felt aesthetically beautiful, making me dream about a good life. However, there were moments I felt sad (even frustrated) for being unable to achieve an equally aesthetically pleasing curation of photos for so many reasons (low-quality camera, bad angle, poor framing, not-Instagram-worthy location), and wonder how everybody else but me seemed to make the most of all the good things in life.
Why can’t I have an Instagram-worthy life like they do?
My narrow perspective back then limited me to seeing that comparing my life with others I know (or strangers) doesn’t really make sense because it was never an apples-to-apples comparison. Every person varies in circumstances, and whatever is curated online doesn’t always tell the whole picture of other people’s lives and reality. Say, sweet couple photos doesn’t always mean a healthy relationship. They could be always fighting and always at the brink of a break-up, but have to convince themselves (and have others believe) that they are okay by posting their photos online.
But I didn’t know better.
What’s worse than not living the good life like everybody seems to be in?
To not be liked online, which felt personal. Because being unappreciated online gives the impression that I am a social pariah and don’t belong in the circle of cool people. You can also add the negative feeling of having few followers (or followers < following) if you care about that, too.
It was a tug between living my life around an imaginary construct of relationships or foster my relationships by truly connecting with my people beyond a like or an occasional comment that we don’t often mean like “I miss you!” Because if we really missed someone, we could have dropped them a message or a call, right? Or if possible, we could have visited them to really build that physical bond, right?
For two years, I was filled with various emotions (good < negative) that felt real and important only when I focused most of my time in front of my device. But when I live my life outside of it, connecting with real people and doing actual things like reading a book and regularly blogging, I felt better and more grounded with things that truly matter.
I never felt more free. And happier.
I never thought I made it like a prison cell of a made-up reality (online life) until I decided I had enough.
In 2019, I walked out of Instagram and into daily blogging.
I also wanted to leave Facebook at the same time for the same reasons, but since I was already blogging and had connected my website to a Facebook Page (and I wanted to retain the Facebook Page for my blog), I decided to stay.
Do you know that doing less on something leads you to do more on another activity?
Now that I better understand how online metrics don’t define me as a person and how good my work is (because I can’t please everybody), I shied away from making “likes” a big deal. Instead, I focused on shipping my work rather than on the elusive and often pointless chase of being constantly admired.
Blogging allowed me to be myself without the pressure of becoming somebody else. It also relieved me from the pressure of external validation, as if being validated was the point of shipping my work instead of expression. This is probably because of the therapeutic rewards of writing and the anonymity of the audience.
Blogging also made me post less and less on Facebook (except when advertising my work). Aside from the occasional publicity here and there (mostly because I want to show off the people who matter to me), I noticed how I was less and less present there (aside from watching cat and dog videos, and comical skits) and more present in my blog.
I even enjoy the isolation a website provides, which keeps me from comparing my life with everybody else. I am learning to be genuinely grateful for others, too. I also discovered that to rekindle dying relationships, all it takes is to really reach out to a person beyond the comment section, like dropping a direct message or a call. You’d be surprised by how they’d equally share the enthusiasm of reconnecting too.
What my online life looked like after …
Today, Instagram encourages people to treat itself like a wedding—like a production engineered to be witnessed and admired by an audience. It has become common for people, especially women, to interact with themselves as if they were famous all the time.
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
After reading that part from the book Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, I finally had the words that I didn’t before about how I felt after using Instagram. I can also relate to how it’s like a wedding every day on Instagram, where all eyes are on you, and you think you deserve to receive all the praise because it’s your wedding day. All the time you spend curating the “best” online presence indeed feels like a “production engineered to be witnessed and admired by an audience.”
For five years, I learned to stop evaluating myself based on the likes and comments I receive online. I like how Seth Godin put it in his 2023 blog post The social media lottery:
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral TikTok. Someone is going to build a meme that spreads around the world.
But it probably won’t be me and it probably won’t be you.
Buying lottery tickets might be fun, but they’re a lousy investment.
So, instead of relying on these social media platforms to build relationships, I relied on messaging and setting face-to-face meetups with my friends because I missed them. No online comment thread can ever be on par with laughter over good food.
Since it’s always fun to take photos and capture the memories of the day, I learned to create a digital photo journal, which is not available to the public eyes, but I often share with my family and close friends. Because aren’t they the best target audience and whose feedback and comments really matter? I adopted the habit mainly because I want to update them personally about my wherabouts instead of letting them see photos of me online just like everybody else. It’s like granting my closest circle a premium subscription of my life updates.
Of course, what worked for me might not work for you. But I can say that this has improved my well-being and sanity compared to having them posted online and feeling bad just because “not enough people liked it.”
When I was in Taiwan for summer school, my classmates kept telling me I should make an Instagram account because it’s a good place to post travel photos. And as a tourist at the time, the idea was appealing. But even when I did not give in, I was not deterred from taking photos of our travels (and I have accrued so many of them in my phone), although having a designated photographer throughout summer school relieved me from missing out on the present.
Today, I don’t have the pressure to document my daily activities, so I have something to post online, which allows me to enjoy myself and be in the moment. This doesn’t mean that posting online is bad because you could be posting online not for public admiration but for online repository (or perhaps for both). It’s just that I am finally out of the cycle I was trapped in five years ago, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Plus, if I really want to post an image with my face or my husband and family on it, I occasionally do so out of storytelling and not for online approval or validation. You can also find our photos uploaded to this blog too.
But one day, when I asked my husband to smile for a photo that I would be tucking away in my digital photo journal (for my eyes only), he remarked with something that resembled of wanting me to post the photos online.
Okay, maybe that’s not what he meant (on the surface), but he somehow meant it. Maybe I was reading too much between the lines when there was nothing to read at all. But it made me think that not all people think like I do, especially my husband! Our marriage only showed me how different we are on so many levels.
So, if I were to go back to posting photos online, I would consider going back to Instagram instead of Facebook. Why? Too much negativity has been circulating on my Facebook feed for quite some time now, and I want to be in peace. It feels like negativity is heavily rewarded on the platform (aside from my weekly dose of animal videos and comical skits).
So, five years later, I returned, but I wasn’t the person I used to be.
Starting a new account feels like starting fresh in my online life. It’s as if I was given a clean slate of possibilities. Perhaps the challenging part was to find my people on the platform and follow them so that I could have an audience. Why do I need an audience? Because I want my husband to feel seen. And having a following means that when I post something, more eyes can see that my husband and I are also doing things married people do. Posting online now felt more like a signaling than out of desperation to be accepted by a tribe.
Because I’ve already found my tribe, my core people, whom I talk to most days.
One night, I tried curating an Instagram post to publicize some of my travels after conceding to the idea that I could make Instagram a repository of the good moments in my life, like a public photo album my friends can occasionally visit. And oh, how many hours did I spend editing and rearranging photos! So, after snapping out of the familiar cycle, I told myself I couldn’t be this kind of person anymore.
Thinking about the work I do now and my profession, it seems that going back to publicizing everything in my life would eat up the time I could have spent researching, writing papers, blogging, and reading books. I could only choose so many activities I could do in a day.
This realization reminded me of Neha, a teacher and researcher from India who I met during my summer school in Taiwan. She told me she hasn’t really built much of an online presence beyond creating profiles for visibility because she’s too busy doing her research. So, I guess I have to choose what persona I would embody.
So, do I want to be like a social media marketer online and spend hours curating the best online presence, but the difference is my life in photos is the product? Or do I continue becoming an energy researcher, a blogger, and an avid book reader, which requires equally the same attention and time?
For now, I will continue doing the same activities I used to and occasionally post on Instagram when my time permits. The last time I posted my first set of photos, it was on a weekend. So, my next one would probably happen on a rest day, too. 😅
At least, this time, there is no pressure to be famous online (measured by the follower count and engagement) because I now know I will never be (thanks, Seth!)—only to signal that I am alive, doing activities like a person, and am married.
jessa 