Instagram and all that jazz

I had been on Instagram. After a while, it just lost its vibe and I quit.

When I first joined Instagram my primary goal was to follow photographers that I admired. Primarily I wanted to learn from their wisdom. 

I was very picky with my followers (they were mostly people whom I knew.) I have never been interested in receiving “likes” from strangers for my photos. I was not interested in seeking public approval, nor I wanted to build a fan base. 

Instagram failed to address my expectations. 

• Most of the time I did not receive posts from the photographers I followed, and on my trail it increasingly showed posts irrelevant to my interests.
• Instagram favoured popular, hyper-edited and tasteless images that lack meaningful stories. 
• With the emergence of AI tools I realised Instagram could use my photographs to train LLMs (AI Large Language Models.) 

I was wasting time on Instagram with zero returns.

I quit Instagram at the time reels were not that popular. Later on TikTok pushed YouTube and Instagram to build their own reel-culture. 

Over time Instagram became the worst platform for sharing photography.