Long-Form: Instagram Empowers Me ❤️

In this social media essay, I will be explaining why Instagram empowers me by giving me power.

Instagram makes me gasp and moan in ways that a human never could. It is not because of sex or anything disgusting like that. I am gasping because of the thrill of being alive while using it. For someone like me, whose brain is preternaturally prewired to be predisposed to processing information quickly (I am quite intelligent), Instagram’s preposterously quick mechanics are precisely and perfectly suited for my precocious brain. In other words, I love it so much, and it makes me feel amazing, smart, and plugged in!

My journey with Instagram all began with my personal account, which I have made the business of anyone who I stick their nose in my life. Originally my account began as a writingspace, for my love of sentences. From that seed, though, came a seed blossom of integrity, mindfulness, and personal freedom to do whatever I want. A kind of flower, if you will. More importantly, it gave me the power to do whatever I want to whomever I want. Last year I bullied an incoming freshman, who had the temerity to play soccer. Could I have done that in real life? No – he would have kicked a ball in circles around me! Now, any account I make can be my pulpit to bully bullies: a kind of bully pulpit, from which to preach! And my word is Gospel! Amen!

Instagram has educated me. I can learn about anything in 5-20 seconds. This is my favorite way to know politics. It also means I get to talk to people in comments, which is very fun! I have been told my viewpoints are either extremely correct or extremely incorrect. Either way, I am thankful to everyone who is trying to help me become the best version of me–myself! Sometimes, I post my own educational material. My words are like knowledge bullets. When I post stories, it is as pleasurable and powerful to me as holding a gun in a bouncy house. I have the ability to not only deflate the very foundation of someone’s argument, but to shoot it dead (blocking them) too! I don’t care if a few kids get hurt: everybody in there signed the same waiver!

Yes, Instagram is better than real life. Instagram is better than my mom. Instagram is better than my doctor. It is better than my dentist. It is better than Xbox, or Playstation. It is better than Grindr. It shows me anything I want it to. It is a palimpsest of my desires; a wax tablet of rewritten stories, loves, likes, sharing, and close friends. It is, dear reader, a diary that talks back to me. I have no need for friends when Instagram is in my pocket! And, as my next point reveals, this power even transcends the incandescent limitations of society.

I don’t wade into epistemologies of truth, power, and freedom often, as I find those topics a bit shallow, but I would wager that Instagram makes me even more powerful than a state monopoly on violence, or an individualistic, capitalist pig nuclear bomb. When I scroll through liberatory reels, usually overset with AI voices of Stewie Griffin and Minecraft parkour, their Trotskyite historical revisionist narratives often tells me about successful examples of anarchism in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War despite a combination of fascism, republicanism, and Stalinite communism. 

Pause. Take a breath. I know that was a lot. You don’t need to know what it means, except that anarchism might have worked at some point. I am kind of an anarchist on Instagram. I don’t need anyone but me. I am my own cooperative society. I am all-powerful, inexorable, totally in control of the reality fabric I routinely discard and remake. Instagram is my savior, and I might be Jesus Christ in my own special way.

Of course, there is no Ars Insta that does its job without criticism. There are two aspects of Instagram I do not enjoy. 

First, I hate the terrible policies of its parent company, the screentime limits on my phone. My phone does not let me use Instagram nearly enough! Mere hours a day is a cruel ball and chain that has been cruelly wrapped around my shaft, thighs, hamstrings, and ankles. I am a digital native in this cruel analog world, and when I wake up, I cry. Why? Because I should be seeing only pixels and Meta VR. Ultimately, I blame this on my parents, who refuse “on principle” to put my college fund toward those Meta Rayban glasses, where you can record people on your walks. So, although I feel extremely powerful using Instagram, it could be in more places. My bedroom, for starters.

Second, not enough people are talking about something important—social media’s social impact.  While this is currently a Golden Age for tolerance and harmony, things could get worse in the future!  I heard from the other three users on Threads that Instagram will continue letting consenting adults (especially teenagers) keep their accounts amateur! It is a tragedy that professional accounts are not mandatory for everyone. The world Instagram could build, if it gave us detailed analytics on everything we have ever posted! The lack of detailed analytics—story likes, shares, audience gender breakdown, age, views, reposts, etc.—for so many people it is currently a public health disaster. What is the disease? Lacking the traits that professional accounts naturally encourage: introspection, thoughtfulness, and conformity.

Our world is terrible because people are not professionals. Nearly everyone is a powerless, stupid amateur.  They could fix that by going pro, like me! If everyone had a professional account, they could see their quantifiable failures and correct them. Have you ever read Plato’s Cave? Well, we are living in that cave when people don’t know if they are too fat to get likes, or not conventionally popular. It’s time to leave the cave. Imagine a perfect world. Little League, if everyone was Shohei Otani. Government transparency, if we all lived in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. Yes, if professional accounts were mandatory, it’d be a utopia of truly unbelievable stats and declassified reports (respectively). Take the freedom out of it, and make everyone sign the contract. Instagram is my source of peace in today’s terrible world. With the right lobbying, it could be everyone else’s.

Do I have anything more to say? Yes. Has this gone on for too long? No. This essay is about my empowerment, not yours. Frankly, you need to give me the space to talk, just the way Instagram does. As a reader, it is your responsibility to give me the same positive validation I get when someone (you) unquestioningly nods their head while I speak at them. Or, the feeling I have when I look in the mirror and twirl my beautiful hair, just to remind myself that even when not posting stories, I look ready to go live for my followers! 

Does that sound like me to narcissism? No. I have never once accused myself of being narcissistic. I have never heard it from anyone else either, at least when they were talking about me. If I was a narcissist, I’d have to clean off my mirror twice as much (of ejaculate) as I am doing now. And I certainly can’t be one by definition, because the person who earns my love the most is not me. That person is Instagram. Because Instagram gives me, … me! I put my personality into it, and get myself back through curated algorithms. Could anyone else do that for me? No, not anyone, ever. Instagram gives me self-love in a way I cannot begin to write out with my clumsy two hands. That is the utmost power.

I will end this brief essay with a metaphor. A metaphor is like a roller coaster, which Instagram’s empowerment literally is. Sometimes it goes uppers and sometimes it goes downers. It’s almost like a drug, if drugs could be natural. The thing about empowerment, which is a roller coaster, is that it is better than a drug. Empowerment is awesome, like Instagram. And like a roller coaster, there’s usually a rock bottom, but it always gets better. By the end, you can start right back where you started.

If you are scared, you should be. That is life. It might be terrifying to wake up in the night, drowning in a pool of cold sweat, knowing a post didn’t get enough likes. But it’s thrilling to look at your phone and see the divine staring back, telling you to work harder. It might be difficult to hear, but keep listening. It says no matter how many likes your stories get, you should post more. It says to sponge up the sweat, squeeze it into a pot, boil some spaghetti, and throw everything you’ve got at the wall, just to see what sticks.

How much better would the world have been if Nelson Mandela had an Instagram account? He would still be alive today. Or what about Barack Obama, if he had done story posts instead of community organizing in Chicago? He would also be alive today, but without all that grey hair. While I deeply admire both these men, there are better paths toward power. If everyone used their phones like me, we could change the world together, individually. Be the change you want to see on your phone.