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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.)

> 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.

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