Things I don't post on Instagram anymore
Welcome to my REAL world. I'm ready to share it with you...
*PS: This is a long post, mainly of pictures. So make sure you press SEE ENTIRE MESSAGE in Gmail.
This year will mark my twelfth year on Instagram. That’s a long time to commit to something. I haven’t even been married that long. And it feels like I’ve been married a lifetime.
There are over 2000 images charting over a decade of my life. Scrolling through them all is like watching one of those old home videos containing snatches of a life you once lead. There are pictures of places I once lived; parties I once danced at; desks I once ruled from behind and colleagues I once knew.
Like everyone else, I was naive when I joined Instagram. I signed up for no other reason than everyone I knew had signed up. And they only signed up because everyone they knew had signed up too. None of us stopped to ask why we were suddenly prepared to share our entire lives with a million different strangers across the world. We just did it.
Except now it feels like the world id switching off, one picture at a time. A recent studied cited by The Business of Fashion found that engagement rates were down 30 per cent year on year in 2022. I dread to think what that number is now.
Some people were made for The Gram’. I was not one of those people. I never got my head around the value of a selfie. Surely my face could only be of that much interest to me? Or at a push, my own mother. I didn’t have a willing Insta-husband who tottered ten paces behind me throughout every holiday, capturing my best angle. (Nor did I want to subject my relationship to that). And frankly there was nothing interesting enough about what I put on my dinner plate worth sharing. But somehow it took on a life of its own. A thousand people followed me; then three thousand; then ten thousand, then twenty thousand. The pressure to perform to a crowd I knew nothing about, nor really cared about was both intense and nonsensical.
Over the last decade I have shared more with my followers than I have with my own family. I have spent hours replying to DMs from nameless strangers who I never hear from again. I have openly shared details of the deeply private places I love to visit- the secret beaches, the loveliest cottage on earth, even where to buy a rare cashmere jumper I spent years, literally YEARS tracking down. Things I had worked hard to find I made easy for people who simply brushed across my profile, past through it (ganneting all the juiciest information) and then swooped out again.
Still, for a short while it felt exhilarating to be connected to thousands of people across the world. Here’s a picture of my lovely handbag! Here’s my feet in Provence! Here’s my legs which look seventy-five per cent slimmer when shot from above on a sun lounger in the Caribbean heat. This is what others did, thus it was the avenue of self-promotion and deceit that I sometimes travelled down too. But God, I felt awful about it. So much so that for the longest time my bio read: This is not a real representation of my 24-7.
I wish I had your life, I was emailed privately on numerous occasions.
(No you don’t - it’s mainly mud and food anxiety)
I wish I had your wardrobe.
You do realise it’s mainly gifted from PRs hoping to curry favour?
You make everything looked effortless. How do you do it?
I mostly don’t. I work obsessively hard. I find things very difficult. Effort is one of the few things I do have…
Of course I never actually said any of those things- because this is Instagram and the premise on with it is built (not by the founders by the way, but by us) has always been: my life is better than your life. Instagram is Disneyland for grown-ups who want to gorge on the make-believe lives of strangers who have good skin 24-7; pink front doors and (inexplicably) dip an awful lots of croissants in their coffee. (Really? Let me tell you, they taste so much better if you just throw a slice of butter and a spoonful of jam on them).
And that was when it hit me- I didn’t want my curated life to make others feel bad about themselves. I wanted the things I shared about my life to connect with others. (I once read that every struggle shared is a gift to another woman. I think it was
who said it- it usually is, isn’t it?). I also didn’t want to connect with anyone any more. I wanted to connect with someone. (Thank you for that lovely phrase). I wanted to hear the voices behind the ‘likes’. I wanted to know that unmasking my life made someone else feel better about theirs. I wanted the ‘likes’ to become people who talked to one people- my pictures serving only as a lovely little cute-meet. I also always wanted to be able to share with those I knew all the places and things I loved, so that they could experience them too and then tell me all about it. And I no longer feel that I can do this on Instagram.Today I have almost 29,000 followers on Instagram- almost the exact same number of subscribers I have here on Substack. And so I have made a decision. I’m going to stop posting personal stuff on my Insta. I’ve been winding it down over the last 12 months anyway. (I can’t leave it yet simply because there’s an entire audience over there that I need to market to- books, Substack masterclasses, friends who need a bit of help promoting a business. This is one of the problems when the entire audience that you have spent years tending to is owned by Facebook.)
Instead this, right here, is where you are going to find my pictures. This is where I now feel comfortable enough to share pictures of my face and my body and my home and my wardrobe and all the things I always wanted to share on Instagram but felt too much of a prat to do so. They won’t always be glamorous because that’s not my life most of the life. But they will be filled with love, and tips, lots of tips, and honesty.
I’m half way through a closet clear out at the moment for example. I’ll share that with you all, PLUS the plan behind it. (I’m thinking about selling much of my stuff in aide of my local animal sanctuary to paid subs, so let me know if this feels like something you’d be interested in).
So in that spirit I wanted to share with you what I really got up to this year in images. And as ever please join me in the community discussion below to let me know how you feel about Instagram nowadays. Are you staying? Did you ever really start? Tell me everything.
Happy Sunday to you all
Fx
PS: If you’re hibernating this January, there’s a great community thread going on right now that is filled with lovely recommendations from everyone. You can find it here. And remember this Substack from today is only monthly for free subscribers but weekly with lots of benefits and invites to events for paid. If you fancy upgraing you can do so by hitting the button below or at the top of this page.