How Two Years of Instagram Stories Has Altered the Way We Love, Act and Play | Hacker News Reader

How Two Years of Instagram Stories Has Altered the Way We Love, Act and Play

esquire.com

61 pointspmcpinto28 comments

I brushed it off as a mere novelty when Snapchat came with the idea of ephemeral posts. I was wrong. It really changes our relationship with the posts, which means we share things that we wouldn't share in other way. That's pretty neat, but can be abused easily.

The stories are basically turning people into vloggers. Depending on how often you post, you'll be in constantly thinking "should I be recording this?" or "what's the next shot?". This can be really draining for the person and their friends. There are few things that annoy me more than someone recording a video in a bar or a club. Even worse when they use flash.

Casey Neistat, of YouTube fame, is a great example of a "serial vlogger", someone that has been vlogging his life for decades. For example, on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfIc944bSJ8 he talks about his girlfriend (now wife). He has footage from 2005 on their first date, hard conversations when they broke up, and (it seems) every highlight of their history. It makes an amazing video, I'd love to be able to rewatch those moments in my life. However, can you imagine living with a friend that's constantly recording their lives (including you)?

That's where we are headed...

I wonder how such a thing would affect people; currently, people change their memories depending on how they feel and what's happened recently and what they hope or expect for the future and how they remembered it the last time (I'm not convinced this is inherently a bad thing). Being unable to do that, being constantly confronted with recorded history differing with our own recollections; what would be the consequences of that?

There's at least one Black Mirror episode about this premise. If I remember correctly, some others also touch this. It's worth while to watch a couple episodes. They're not all great, but many are good food for thought if you like to philosophize about the impact of technology on our future.

That's a pretty interesting episode, S01E03 for those who are curious. The Electric Dreams series also has an interesting episode on this (S01E05), but focusing more on virtual reality than re-living your own past (although one can easily imagine a VR of your own memories).

I wonder. When I had a kid I tried to take more video, but there was always a tradeoff between living an experience or standing beside it to video it. While taking a photo is more transient and less interruptive.

Taking a photo to show someone who isn't there is more like a video than just taking a quick snap to remind yourself or other participants of a good time.

> However, can you imagine living with a friend that's constantly recording their lives (including you)?

I can imagine; I hope it's better than the blue screen glow that takes over all my friend's faces when I get the once-a-summer chance to hang out with them.

I've seen first-hand friends become absolutely obsessed with Instagram Stories. It's really tragic to watch and honestly it just looks so embarassing from the outside. I hate how forced and fake everything is.

I used to use Facebook quite heavily myself, but the only "social media" I use now is sharing photos directly to friends/family on Whatsapp and making an effort to chat to/call them every now and then. I honestly feel like I have a much more social life doing that than I ever did using Facebook.

It is interesting how the web has become about portraying oneself rather than new ideas. In a way it has become a massive propaganda machine in how wonderful the world is.

I think it's also the reason for all the conspiracy theories that are increasingly running rampant.

No matter what you believe, there's someone out there saying it's a lie or it's true, there's no absolute truths anymore; anything is real.

As a consequence of that, now that no-one knows what to believe, people are starting to trust personalities like Alex Jones simply because they're appealing or entertaining to listen to.

News is just content now. What you believe isn't the truth, it's identity, your tribe, your personality. It doesn't matter if it's true, it just matters that it's in line with the belief of your tribe.

Marshall Mcluhan would say that we have moved from hot to a cool media. Going from the mainly text based internet of old to one that is very visual. Hot media is a media of words and sounds and a cool one is that of rich media. Somebody who is good at projecting an image does well in a cool media.

> News is just content now. What you believe isn't the truth, it's identity, your tribe, your personality. It doesn't matter if it's true, it just matters that it's in line with the belief of your tribe.

When was this idealized time when news _wasn't_ content produced for money?

but... world is wonderful! just that we're not exposed to its beauty all the time, at least not most of us

The web is not 'about' portraying oneself in the slightest. There are still new and fascinating things to learn and discover - you just have to step away from Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/etc. and be willing to explore.

As a 41 yr old I am glad I am too old for this.

Wow,

I merely do Facebook and few of my friends post very many "personal experience" pictures. A few do and it feels like no one gets judged that much. Other corners of the site may have a different ethos.

But this seems like a disturbing way to exist.

I totally agree. I've got Facebook, which I use very sparsely, and Instagram which I use a bit more often to post images for my closest family and friends. Thus I don't feel a need to post images displaying how "perfect" my life is. They already know what flaws, and what good things, I have in my life, so to try to pretend something else would be plain out weird.

Social media is like alcohol, enjoy it for what it is and don't abuse it.

If you become hooked don't be surprised when it's a net negative in your life.

I found my withdrawal from social media and alcohol was very similar. The difference is that there is no one tinkering with alcohol’s chemical composition to make sure it is configured just to fit my personal body chemistry.

Social media has a bunch of really smart people whose only job is to make it personally addictive to me specifically.

I have a hard time understanding what the social aspects of a photo sharing site can be. Until now Instagram also had zero appeal for me, especially with such ideas like that you can only upload pictures from phones.

I think there are mainly two aspects: sharing an artistic side, and sharing what's happening in your life. Stories are focused on what's going on with your life.

I find it valuable to connect with friends, especially those I don't see often. If I know you've been traveling or got a new job, I can ask you about it. Instead of a generic "Hey, how are you doing?", I can go "How's the new job?". That makes it easier for me to have a small talk, so I connect more with friends, which is a good thing.

The problem is overdoing it. And everything is set for us to overdo it. It then stops being "cool, Jane seems to be having a great time, I'm happy for her!" to "everybody is having a blast while I'm stuck in 9-5, my life sucks".

Three aspects - influencers and wannabe influencers trying to gain lots of followers to plug products.

So they don't need to get a "real" job, they can just post a few pictures and get paid.

It's a window to the world of people you know/admire/like.

Facebook, for me, became this staid place where people complained or posted mundane stuff.

I open Instagram and I see:

- one of my favorite music artists posted a pic from the highest railway in Japan

- a gaggle of models I follow are looking fine

- some street art from Berlin

- motivational story from Gary Vaynerchuck

- the hashtag of my favorite city surfaces snaps that give me wunderlist to return

There's nothing there to make me rage - no politics, no lame memes, no arguments. Just a steady stream of aesthetically-pleasing photos to make my mind wander for 30 seconds or so.

- a gaggle of models I follow are looking fine

A flock of models, some are into fitness, some are perhaps best described as documentarians of their derriere, are also looking fine in my feed.

Escapism. People used to read pulpy books, now they are just looking at happy (rich) people and juicy booty.

I'm an artist, and its become my preferred social media platform for sharing my work. It's got a wide audience and is slicker to use than Tumblr. Lately I've started using the stories thing to documentary my creation process, it's actually been pretty fun.

> Is slicker to use than Tumblr

What are you on? Tumblr isn't great, but it doesn't force you into its hard to use, storage space gobbling, facebook influenced app. They add insult to insult to insult by having a website that allows uploading, but only presenting it when you pretend to be using a smartphone.

You can't download photos. No collections. No public liking / reblogging. Tumblr has that and allows you to use it on your computer.

Ads on Tumblr are less cancerous. You can ZOOM IN ON PICTURES.

is this an ad or a genuine piece of journalism?

Have you actually read it? It's clearly a critique of the feature.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com