Hacker News Reader

Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

Is Instagram still heavily used by the Hacker News demographic? I'm starting to get a bit older, so I'm not always current, but my impression from my social circle is that it's fading like Facebook. I know a handful of "power users" who post nonsense everyday, but most people I know (myself included) never post at all now.

For me now, Instagram is a website, where I briefly check out surgically-altered fitness models doing barbell squats while I'm standing in line at the grocery store. I use the PWA, because the native app constantly freezes on two separate devices and the developers don't seem to care.

I'm stupefied by the idea that this could still be an important part of life for many average adults.

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Try being a single dude in your 20s/early 30s without some "social proof" when trying to talk to 30 and younger girls. They will immediately think you are a weirdo for not having that proof that you're not some sort of loner. I personally use ig for posting things that give me a little more edge over normal dudes - my Olympic weightlifting progress, my trips snowboarding/surfing, my cute dogs, music festivals/shows that I got to...it's helpful. but I'm not gonna post on there about the new Jenkinsfile that I spent a week crafting to deploy a 10 microservices for a state machine. RIP Google+, the Instagram for geeks.

Are you joking? I'm 35 and regularly date girls (in SoCal) with an age range of 22 through 28 or so. I have an instagram account which I never use and has about 8 photos on it from years ago. No one ever asks me to show my instagram account and I never mention it. I have tons of "dating success."

So your theory of "social proof" through Instagram doesn't seem valid at all for me. Note: I don't have an active FB account either. So basically, I manage to successfully date many 20-something women with basically zero social media.

I think you might be trying to "talk to" the wrong kind (or a very specific kind) of people if they'll only engage with you after receiving some social proof via Instagram. In my anecdotal experience, I've never heard of experienced such a situation.

That's... not something I or anyone I know has ever experienced. Maybe they assume you could be weird for some other reason, and Instagram gives you a lifeline? But again noone I know without Instagram has had any issue dating.

I think it says a lot more about you and the people you're interested in, than the people who don't have Instagram.

Wow things have become easy to gamify for the average guy. Back in the day the girl had to know you from a friend or work and demand real social proof.

With a few well placed pictures maybe a mention from an influencer I can get thousands of girls prevalidated to hookup with.

Someone will come out with an app soon: InstraLife, selects a target account ig account pulls in similiar photos and creates a mirror profile.. also follows most active users from target's profile..

I use it all the time. I love it. (for reference, 30-yo programmer in NH with photography hobby. Most of my friends are not programmers.)

It's the best way to share art and life updates. Totally better than Facebook for keeping up with friends and seeing what people are doing, seeing their new art, etc.

FB and twitter have too much "noise" in the form of memes and shared articles, so my friends don't write original stuff for me to read/us to discuss like they used to on those platforms. So Instagram has taken the place of the social network where people actually share stuff about their lives/art/experiences/etc, and that's what I want to see.

> It's the best way to share art

Right, first off the quality of pics on IG is abysmal, not even talking about the aspect ratio limitation. And on top of that you have to search very hard to find actual og content on instagram, everyone is copying the trend of the week/month thinking they're hip [0]. It's like watching straight to DVD movies for their artistic value.

There are two kind of people on ig:

- narcissistic people who live through their projections, seeking approval from strangers / acquaintances.

- advertisers / "influencers" trying to brainwash <15 years old into thinking that life is all about how you look and what you consume.

[0] https://www.boredpanda.com/social-media-instagram-identical-...

I find very few photographers obsess over "image quality", instead they care about if a photo is a good photo or not.

And I'm the first to agree with that, I shot 35mm film and scan it myself. But not to the extent of jpeg compression artefacts and ultra low resolution, just look at that [0], you can barely distinguish anything besides blurry blobs of colors (it's displayed even smaller on the actual IG feed). I hate pixel peeping, but imho the only way that pic would look decent is on a 4" display.

[0] https://scontent-frx5-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/5390bf9a135306a5...

Photogs adapt to the medium. [1] provides a good insight into how Instagram's (initial) square-only format and low resolution are creative constraints themselves. I practice mostly street and photojournalism with some portraits (and also shoot, develop, and scan my own film) and story has always triumphed quality, and Instagram's limits are plenty.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQWYEPNh8QE

Not true... How about all the makers out there? They are going to make with or without approval from strangers / aquaninstences. I am happy they share on IG as I wouldn't see their creations otherwise... especially folks in countries that do not use an western style keyboard.

> They are going to make with or without approval

Well yeah that's the whole point. If you "make" to show you're not a "maker" you're a "shower". IG is purely built for attention seekers / self centered people and wouldn't exists without them. (it's always a form of narcissism / virtue signalling / showing off

You can be happy they share their stuff on instagram but it doesn't change the underlying reason of why it is shared.

Some makers are motivated by showing / sharing things to others even before social media was around. Instagram is also a useful marketing platform for creative professionals who may otherwise have had a harder time breaking through. Just because the platform doesn't fit your use case doesn't mean people don't use it for useful applications.

Is there an official logical fallacy for "I subscribed to shit content producers and now I get shit content, I blame the app"? I feel like I see that one a lot...

Look at what's "trending", look at what's popular, I'm not talking about the .01%. The .01% don't affect society.

This is only true until the platform shows you a load of content you didn't subscribe to.

This is something Instagram and Twitter both do.

I find it interesting that an app for photo sharing is considered better for sharing updates with friends, than a service such as Facebook designed for sharing updates with friends.

Similarly I was shocked to discover that people chat on Instagram, despite many good messaging apps.

It’s the networks right? I have friends who organise parties on gist.github.com and that works pretty well... for a certain group.

> It’s the networks right?

Nay, it's the limitations. On Facebook you can share dumb articles from news sites and meme sites, articles that you never read, you just agree with the title. On Instagram it is not so easy to do this, so people share real stuff about their lives instead.

Even if it is a curation, Instagram is at least about my friends, and not about dumb news articles and memes. (Facebook was not always that way, I used to love it when it was essentially a book of open letters to friends. Alas, article/meme just turned it into an even-worse reddit.)

I use it. About 6 months ago I deleted my facebook and instagram accounts. I found that I didn't miss my facebook in the slightest. I didn't miss much about my instagram, but I did find that I missed how easy it was to share photos of myself and my family with extended family and close friends, and to see theirs.

Since then I've created a new account, but I've only followed about 15 of my closest friends/family. None of them are aspiring "influencers", and so the content I'm seeing doesn't have any product placement, political messaging, or really anything other than photos/video updates on my friends. As a result, I don't have much of a reason to check it more than once a week or so. It feels like a much better balance than previously and so I find myself appreciating the app, what little I use of it. I think a lot of the problems people have with it arise when they are using the platform to find "content" ala YouTube or HackerNews rather than simply a social network for sharing your personal media with people you actually know.

I and many of my non-local friends and family keep in touch with one another with Instagram, moreso than facebook, for sure.

When traveling, my wife and I maintain a "post-only" and "reply-only" rule, where we can post updates publicly and reply to comments on those posts, but no general browsing of social media. Besides whatsapp and SMS for communicating with whomever is traveling with us, Instagram ends up being our main source of sharing and communication with people at our destination.

For instance, when in London last year, I posted a few photos as we were bouncing around town and ended up meeting with a couple friends who I hadn't realized moved there recently.

Also, anything I'm working on creatively (lately, sourdough) ends up on my feed.

I post miniatures I've painted and follow some other miniature hobbyists (Warhammer in this case).

I've found that Instagram use is growing amongst nearly all of my friend groups (including HN demo and non), while use of all other social apps is fading (not counting WhatsApp). For reference, mostly age 24-32 in the US and Western Europe.

It has the benefit of posting something simple and easy, a picture. And those pictures rarely convey opinions, so there are less wars on instagram.

I've mostly moved my social media screen time to TikTok.

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