An update on muting everyone on Instagram
A month and a half in, and results are mixed!
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Comedy Loft (DC). May 28th. featuring for the great Sam Salem.
Hello Sternal Journalists!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I muted everyone on Instagram. In case you didn’t read it, yes I muted everyone. I muted all of my best friends and loved ones and if I follow you, dear reader, even you.
Now that I’m a month and a half into the experiment, I’d like to report my findings. Here are a few things that have happened:
Some friends have cheered me on.
It’s like Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting desperately hoping to one day knock on the door and Will’s gone. At least two people expressed having cheered internally when they read about it because they believe that Instagram is a digital Southie that they were always rooting for me to escape. In short, some people love it.
Some other people thought it was very annoying.
Many more people mistook my brute force mute-everyone tactic for me saying I had deleted Instagram or my account. A lot of, “Wait, but you posted yesterday.”
And then I have to explain, yes, yes, indeed I posted. I am making things that I hope others see, I just don’t trust myself to see what anyone else is posting.
And then they get at least a little annoyed because, I think, it feels like I’m not holding up my end of a bargain. In some ways, this is true! Instagram only works because everyone who wants to post anything has to inherently also view the posts of others. If everyone did what I’m doing, pretty much all likes would come to a halt. So I am, in effect, not pulling my weight.
To be clear, I don’t believe anyone is actually annoyed with me. I think it’s more just that they think it’s a little eye-rolly and dumb for me to do it in the first place. But also…
I have missed, to my knowledge, zero important pieces of information and maybe one non-important piece of information that I still wanted to know about.
A couple weeks ago, I was leaving an open mic when a friend walked up. I asked what he was doing there.
“I have a show here.”
“What?! Since when?”
“For like a month. It’s every week.”
“A weekly show around the corner from me? How did I miss this??”
“I mean, I’ve been posting about it a lot.”
“Ohhhh, I have you muted. But don’t worry! I have everyone muted now!”
So did I find out about this show later than I would have if I’d been glued to the gram? Yes. Was that probably better for my mental health? Also yes. And once we got past the awkwardness of, “No, I know it sounds like something someone would say if they muted you and were trying to not make you feel bad, but seriously I did mute everyone,” it was very refreshing to learn about the show via happenstance and conversation rather than just as a drop in the passive intake of information about everyone I’ve ever met.
I want more of that! However, there was also a downside:
I still spend a lot of time on Instagram.
The worst part of all this is that I’ve realized I still reflexively will open the app and, though it’s not serving me tantalizing info about friends and celebs, the discover page still gets me. My discover page is absolutely trash (other than pictures of orangutans), so I do wind up being able to tear myself away, but it tends to feel extra bad.
So overall, I am spending zero quality time on Instagram, but still spending some awful time on there. Though this is literally what I asked for. I set out to break Instagram and I did.
Conclusion
I’m forging ahead with the experiment, but overall, I’d give it a C+. I’ve accomplished the initial goal of making Instagram a terrible place so that I spend less time there, but the unintended consequence of “I spend less time there, but 100% of the time I spend there is awful and there’s no fooling myself” makes it a clunky and inelegant solution.
ANYWAY
Recommendations!
Brian Simpson: Live from the Mothership. Special. I was not super familiar with Simpson’s comedy, but a lot of friends have recommended him to me. I thoroughly enjoyed this Netflix special, especially this bit about tall men. Great jokes, great cohesion, check it out.
Serial Season 4. Podc
ast. Serial is back and I know a lot of people stopped listening after Season 2, but I’ve checked out the pilot of this season which is all about Guantanamo Bay, and it dedicates a not insignificant portion to talking about how horny of a place GitMo is. So I’m intrigued.
This video of French café servers racing 1.2 miles to deliver a croissant and an espresso. Video. Oui oui, exactly what it sounds like.
Non Believer. Song. New Kodak Black. Bumpin’.
P.S. I spend anywhere between two and twelve hours a week on the Sternal Journal. If you enjoy receiving it (and are RICH) consider becoming a paying subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can provide me with a bit more time to come up with fun topics, poems, and interviews; and you with probably fewer typos (Update: I have gained some paid subscribers since originally writing this bumper and I don’t think it’s had a meaningful impact on typos. Workin’ on it!)
Good on you, Jules! Let's keep this experimenting and reflecting going.
Next stop: Post your stuff then immediately delete the app. TRY IT YOU WON'T