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Comment by lowq | Hacker News Reader

Millennial here, deleted my account a few days ago.

Unlike most platforms, Instagram cuts strait to the most depressing part: pictures. I've had enough with social media, and I envy those who never created a Facebook.

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Why do pictures depress you so much? Honestly, I think if that's the case, it says that you have some unresolved issues you probably should deal with. Part of what makes social media seem depressing is your attitude with it.

Social media is depressing because all your friends seem to have much more interesting and entertaining lives than you do.

The thing is I guarantee you the people without all this social media addiction generally have more interesting lives than the ones who do.

I like Instagram for the opposite reason. I only want pictures, and I definitely don't want anymore whiny rants, third-rate political screeds or fake news sharing.

> I envy those who never created a Facebook.

what? is it some virus you can't cure from your mind now? just stop using it. I stopped about 6 years ago and have never missed it.

sigh One of these days.

A starting point (at least it was for me) might be to unfollow (not unfriend) everyone. That way, your feed is empty and you'll get bored opening facebook after a while. You'll still get event invites and direct messages, so you're missing very little of substance.

No. It's like being a pureborn, never connected to the Matrix.

"Deleting Facebook" is the new "giving up smoking".

If pictures are depressing you you might be following the wrong people.

To me, what's depressing is the amount of energy people spend proving their experiences were so amazing versus actually experiencing them.

It has always been like that. The amount of energy, of pretending, we put into recreating past experiences through retelling, photo, movie, conversation... it almost always trumps the experience itself.

Facts don't matter. Only opinions, how we choose to see them and agree on its meaning as a group matters.

This is a pretty narrow Instagram experience. I follow my actual friends who post random things from their life, and then people from a few different hobbies.

Except for watch people, none of it is carefully curated 'look at me' experiences. Watch people are another stripe though.... $20k on the wrist, $200k steering wheel.

I mean the only other point of buying a Patek other than showing it off is to keep it as something to give away to your unappreciative son

I like the quote about a Patek on Succession, "And it's amazingly accurate - every time you look at your wrist, you know -exactly- how rich you are."

Haha, that's great.

Empty your feed and start over. My feed is nothing but picture of wildlife and it's amazing. No humans, only fantastic photographs.

Photography has been a huge hobby for decades. Is the fact that it is so much more accessible now really mean that the entire basis is proving your experiences were amazing rather than experiencing them?

10 years ago, no one every would have accused someone who brings his DSLR onto a hike of "not experiencing" the hike. (Though you might have a point that it would have been pretty weird to have brought a camera to brunch just to get a great photo of your eggs benny)

You want to know what’s depressing?

A follower with a terminal illness wrote a heartfelt letter to a popular Instagram influencer that they followed and whose photos they enjoyed. When they passed away, the letter was sent on their behalf to the influencer.

When the influencer received the letter, they quickly skimmed through it, said “Cool” and tossed it in the trash with some other junk mail.

This is a strange comment, to me.

What should they have done? Reached out to the family of the anonymous follower? What does the "popular Instagram influencer" owe to someone who enjoys his/her photos?

Maybe no one sees anything wrong with it, and perhaps there is nothing wrong with it, hence the downvotes.

What's depressing though is not that people post pictures of a life you wish you had, they do it while not giving a shit about you, no matter how much you might admire them. If you have millions of followers, or maybe even a couple hundred thousand, then statistically a few die everyday, without even so much as a passing thought.

And yet we waste so much time looking at these people's content and letting it depress us, and not enough at those around us who matter more.

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