Finsta: a term coined to describe a private Instagram account disguised by a clever ‘undercover’ name which can only be followed by your closest, most trustworthy circle of friends. It’s the latest social media phenomenon that’s spamming the ‘who to follow’ or ‘suggested for you’ section on our Instagram feeds. A place to post silly selfies, funny screenshots, or a picture accompanied by a story in the caption that you want to share with your followers as your Instagram alter-ego.
Functioning as a group chat for a very select personal network of friends who otherwise might not be comfortable with each other in a typical iMessage thread, a Finsta can connect contacts from different aspects of your life without the endless notifications whenever someone contributes a like or comment. The point of a Finsta is to share your secrets and stories but only with an audience you trust. Everyone else is on the outside looking in, wondering what could possibly be hidden behind the forbidden follow button.
These exclusive accounts can be innocent and silly, or juicy and scandalous. Since the account is private, it’s up to the Instagram lurker to draw assumptions about what they believe could be on the other side. Finastas have been spamming the ‘suggested follows for you’ section because as friends start to follow and like posts from that account, Instagram begins to associate it with a network of other accounts that those friends commonly interact with. Sometimes Finstas are so well disguised with an impersonal name, picture, and bio that it can be impossible to tell who it actually belongs to. Having no personal information associated with the public profile of the account can add an extra layer of anonymity, however simultaneously takes away from the humour associated with identifying yourself with an “undercover” alter-ego.
Finstas seem to be most commonly used to post about current drama, boy and relationship issues, selfie advice/approval, or funny stories from a night out. Rather than texting the same thing separately to multiple different friends, the same message can just be communicated once to a select following of people. From here your Finsta followers can choose to acknowledge the post with a like or comment or just scroll past with no hard feelings.
One of the most interesting things about Finstas is that you now have the opportunity to see how a person chooses to behave on social media when there are no societal pressures to get a ridiculous number of likes, comments and/or followers. Finsta users have no competition, no pressure to look or act or present themselves a certain way online, and don’t have to worry about considering who the post is meant to impress.
“I personally think the Finsta world is amazing. There’s something so awesome about telling all of your friends about the things going on in your life through an Instagram account that only they can see. My fake account is full of embarrassing stories, drunk endeavours, and a wide variety of unfortunate events in my life. Only my best girlfriends follow mine because I only allow people that I completely trust to follow it. Also, not to be that girl, but I absolutely love how girls can expose guys’ sleazy ways on their fake accounts for their ‘f*ckboy’ ways. It’s like a controlled gossip girl channel about your own life. I love it.” –Carly, Third Year General Arts
“Finstas are the ultimate paradox. We jump at the opportunity to share our filtered and edited life with thousands of people (on Instagram) and cling to the idea that we are portraying a life that is not entirely our reality. Finstas are used to share our unedited personal life, but we are still doing so on a public platform. Why is there such a divide and secrecy between who we are and who we want people to see us as?” –Maddy, Third Year Sociology
“I don’t think they’re bad, they’re actually pretty amusing. I think the bad thing is that we feel we can’t post those ‘ugly’ or ‘embarrassing’ photos on our regular accounts. We filter everything in our lives to do what’s ‘right’ in accordance to society. As an actor, if you ever get a big break, the internet can become your worst enemy very quickly. I think people see Finstas as this invincible account because it isn’t under your real name, but it’s still posted on the internet and out there forever. I see both sides and I think they’re really fun, but I think we should still always be careful of what we post.” -Hailey, Third Year Musical Theatre
“As a business student, I put a lot of value on not doing things that might bite me in the ass in the future. If one day I decide to run for a position and they find something terrible from my past, I’m screwed. That’s why I try to avoid doing anything that would give me a criminal record, or stuff that is embarrassing or self-degrading, y’know? It’s one of those things where our parents would probably be like ‘this is a terrible idea’ but the kids are just like ‘lol mom chill it’s fun.’” -Louis, Third Year Commerce
It can be easy to fall into a false sense of security and anonymity when it comes to Finstas. We assume that because our account is private, our content can’t be accessed or shared by anyone beyond our followers or any third party applications. However, the truth is that all of our online activity is tracked, recorded, analyzed, and sorted in massive databases for marketing and advertising purposes (mostly). Every like, follow, post, share, and even login is being monitored in order to predict online behavioural trends and then sell our attention as consumers to producers and manufacturers.
While Finstas can be super fun and entertaining, it’s still important to keep in mind the risks that come along with posting exposing content online (even if the account is private). Living in an age of screenshots and big data, we’ve all heard that there’s no way to delete content from the internet once it’s been posted. Take a moment to also think about the number of apps you’ve mindlessly granted access to your camera roll. Consider that every time you hit ‘allow’, that app takes a copy of every image you have saved on your phone. Scary, isn’t it? Those applications now have access to ALL your pictures, not just the select few that you want to post. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn…the list goes on.
From here, I am going to leave it up to you to decide how you feel about this particular social media phenomenon. Whether you think it’s fun, relieving of the pressure to conform to socially constructed aesthetic standards on social media, or just another way to get caught posting content that could jeopardize your reputation/future career. Finstas are hot, new, and exciting but as we all know a little too well, jumping on board with an Internet trend can die-hard and resurface without warning. Just ask anyone who’s had their 2007 Myspace profile rediscovered in the past 3 years or so ;).