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Comment by vmlinuz | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so I'm going to hijack this slightly...

I'm an elderly (mid-40s) non-USian techie, and I've never done Instagram. On Facebook I mostly follow people I've largely lost touch with in real life (particular these past couple of years), and on Twitter it's news sources and journalists, plus a selection of 'celebs' from various niche interests like tech, sci-fi, winter sports and comedy.

Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram?

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> Am I likely to be missing anything interesting by largely ignoring Instagram?

I'm going to say, no. But then, if you consider mid-40s elderly, I'm positively geriatric.

I’m an elderly mid-30s dinosaur. Are you pre-big bang?

No, just pre-comet. You must be a bird, they're the only things so young that in any sense "are dinosaurs".

Its become the defacto central hub of the art world, especially with the exacerbated decline of in-person small and large art galleries. For the overwhelming majority of emerging / non-established artists, if you aren't on instagram other artists will literally just forget you exist. I know somebodys just going to respond with something contrary here but Im open to it if anybody knows about some other healthier platform for artists to connect and share their work on...

Maybe. I’m a little younger than you and I both post and consume Instagram Stories. It’s mostly of my kids and my friends kids. I like that the posts only last for 24 hours and there a no likes, etc etc. By contrast my actual Instagram profile and FB profile are very quiet.

Maybe you have friends that are the same (but if you don’t care to watch endless videos of other people’s kids maybe give it a miss!)

I agree, I like the ephemeral nature of stories in theory at least (Mark Zuckerberg cackles in the distance somewhere).

quite literally - download a data export and see you'll see every story you've ever posted.

Oh, for sure there are permanent copies, you can go to your profile to find them. But I actually kind of like that too, I like to be able to privately look back through my old memories. Just don’t want a permanent public record.

I like that to comment you have to send them a message also, ends up leading to a conversation as opposed to comments on a post.

There's a lot of good photography on IG, and a lot of my friends primary social publications are photo blogging.

That said, I have all fb properties dns blocked: fb, instagram, and whatsapp. The privacy invasion isn't worth the content at all.

You should delete your fb account, as it serves as an implicit endorsement of the platform to your friends, family, and associates.

Some of your younger friends / relatives / colleagues think Facebook is for their parents’ generation and put the stuff they want their contemporaries to see on Instagram. But not too young, there’s a generation behind them that thinks Instagram is for old people.

In terms of pure functionality there’s absolutely nothing special about Instagram. At this point the two products are reskins of the same functionality.

Facebook is a lot more comprehensive, I think. But I've also deleted my FB account a while ago.

I know a few people who get severe anxiety after spending too much time on there. I don’t use it but it seems really negative because of the algorithm forcing polarizing, stress-inducing content on you and your friends and family. It might possibly be okay if you strictly follow a non political artist or two that you like

I think even the apolitical stuff causes a different flavor of the same anxiety though on some deeper level based on the comparing-your-insides-to-other-peoples-outsides phenomena. What I cant figure out is why so many of my artist friends are on there so willingly with seemingly no conscious awareness of any toxic effects. I seriously feel like my partner and I are the only artists who find IG toxic but we have to be on there because its essentially required for anyone in the arts...

I'm a US tech person in my 20s who does not use Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at all.

I do miss out on things because friends and family use Facebook for event planning, so I have to hear about things secondhand from mutual friends. But I never feel like I miss anything from the others.

I follow a few artists on it. It's good for when you want to see what people are making without the kind of chatter you get on Facebook or Twitter.

Agree with this, I'm a big fan of sci-fi and high-fantasy art, and follow a great deal of amazing artists on IG, there's more than a couple of great space paintings in my living room that I saw on the site, contacted the artist and offered to buy a print from. That and of course seeing friends in their own necks of the woods is what makes the platform for me.

I resisted for a long time, but the reason I use instagram now is that some of my friends have moved to that platform. So I’m sort of split between fb and instagram now. Also, I like checking “stories” on instagram as you get a quick glimpse of what people are up to and you can send them messages to react instead of writing a comment, which is more likely to lead to a real convo.

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