So, you’re scrolling through Instagram and you come across a blurry picture of a slice of bread. It’s a carousel post, so you continue to swipe. It’s a snapshot of some random cheese. And then a few rings. And then a sunset. Nothing spectacular, yet the post has accumulated thousands of likes. So, you decide to try out this ever-so-casual trend on your own.
This is the rise of the Instagram photo dump.
What’s not to love? Influencers are no longer posting their impossible-to-achieve lifestyles. In fact, you can now post content just like theirs – after all, how difficult is it to snap a quick picture of your berries before you eat your afternoon snack?
The answer to that question, however, would be a little more difficult than you’d think – here’s why.
Casual photos are still performative
Sure, maybe Instagram dumps aren’t professionally photographed—you don’t need to get your makeup done and put on your newest outfit only for a few shots outside your balcony—but they’re still performative nonetheless. On social media, and especially Instagram, we tend to only show the versions of ourselves we want others to see. So, if I want you to think I’m eating healthy, going to the gym and waking up at five in the morning to watch the sunrise, then that’s what you’re going to see.
What’s worse about the “casual” Instagram movement is that it’s all masked behind the idea of not caring what other people think. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. That one dump of six photos probably took me an hour to curate, and it took me another hour to finally settle on the order.
Every living moment is turned into content
Now that we’ve established that anything can be labelled as “aesthetic,” it also means we’re constantly taking pictures of everything instead of living in the moment. Reading a book in bed? Let me share with everyone what I’m reading. Doing this week’s grocery run? I’m sure everyone wants to see the salmon I just bought.
In fact, this kind of goes against the “casualty” of Instagram – there’s nothing casual about taking a picture of your surroundings while you’re on a walk or on the subway. But somehow, we all just ignore that fact and pretend these pictures just magically appeared in our camera rolls.
The feed comes first
And of course, as casual as Instagram can really get, we’ll still be curating our feed to perfection. With the ability to archive and unarchive my posts, I’m constantly changing my mind, wondering whether my feed looks better with or without my most recent post. And apparently, Instagram could be adding a feature to change the overall order of your previous posts, so I know I’ll be questioning my feed even more than ever before.
READ: Instagram is Dying – Here’s Why
That’s not to say that photo dumps should be completely banned from Instagram. They can still be fun, creative ways to express yourself. If anything, I wrote this piece as a reminder for myself to not take social media that seriously. So, dump away, but be cautious that casual Instagram isn’t always as great as it seems.