It’s Saturday morning and you roll over in your bed hoping you slept until a decent hour. 10:27. You’ll take it. You grab your phone; 3 Snapchats (shoot was I Snapchatting last night?) and a text from a friend; “go to taco bell” and you’re instantly reminded of the delicious crunch wrap supreme you got last night. Go you! You check those Snapchats and then, there it is; the hipster little camera sitting so innocently between Twitter and Facebook; Instagram.
You open the app and are instantly given a sneak peak into all of your friends’ nights:
Wow she looks really good in that dress!
She’s in Florida!?
I thought they broke up?
Then you get to your post from last night, 17 likes. A little underrated don’t you think? It was a great caption and you thought you looked pretty good in it. You expected a bit more from your Insta fam, how could they let you down?
Everyone is entitled to at least one going out Insta per weekend, so it takes a lot of decision on when, where and how you’re going to do it. Should it be funny? Classy? Casual? Fancy? Friday or Saturday night? What about Thursday? But if you already posted a #tbt, can you still post a hot picture of your friends from Fever? Is that an Instagram overload?
After you’re all dolled up for the night, next comes the inevitable 8000 picture photo shoot that occurs between your friends. Its mandatory to get a picture with each one of your friends, from every different angle, a laughing picture and a smiling picture, and then make sure that you retake it if you don’t look cute in every single one. The next 10 minutes before you head out for the night are left to Instagram. Now all of your friends are scrolling through their camera rolls searching for the perfect picture to post to Instagram.
You look through yours, and start to get worried as you are not liking any of the pictures. Are you not going to be able to Insta tonight!? What if you have to wait until tomorrow night?! The night is young, maybe you’ll capture the greatest picture later tonight. And then as you’re about to give up hope…boom. You find it. The perfect combination of a funny but cute picture that shows off your outfit and your shoes. You’re thinking at least 30 likes on this one for sure.
You open Instagram and get your picture ready for editing. Sad part is your picture doesn’t fit in the box, and you have to cut out your shoes. Bummer. Not to worry, you still have a solid post ahead of you. If you’re really hardcore you’ve probably already put this picture through 3 different editing apps before Instagram, but we’ll leave that for the selfie posting middle schoolers.
Now comes the detrimental stage of choosing a filter. GASP. Selecting a filter can make or break the Insta. This is a serious process; from the ever popular X-Pro II to the hardly ever used Kelvin, you’ve got to try them all on. Who knows, the filter could be the difference between 10 and 11 likes. And don’t lie; you know that 11th like is a game changer.
After finally completing the grueling process of picking a filter, you have to decide on a caption. Are you going to opt for something simple? An inside joke that nobody else understands except the person in it? A casual emoji? Or the ever so bold nothing at all? It is all up to you, the ball is in your court.
Now that you’ve settled on a caption that perfectly embodies the picture, do you add a location? Do you feel like showing off where you were all night? Or does the picture need clarification of where you might be? Or maybe you’re just somewhere cool and you want everyone to know it. The location has been selected and now, deep breath, another hard part. Do you want to post it to Facebook and Twitter too? That’s increasing the audience for the Insta, it better be a good picture. Posting it to more social networking sites allows people to see it who might not be on Instagram. Trying to make an ex-boyfriend jealous? Show your mom that you really have made friends in college? Then maybe you want to post it elsewhere too.
Now that you have completed the process, all that’s left to do is post! Now you are ready for the night, take some more pics to Instagram in the morning, and await what I’m sure what will be hundreds of likes on your latest picture.