Why I stopped using Instagram
A small decision about attention, and why I moved my photographs somewhere quieter.
I deleted Instagram on a Tuesday, without announcing it, which is the only way I know how to do these things without turning them into a performance.
The problem wasn’t the app
It was the way the app rearranged my attention. I would open it to look at a friend’s photograph and surface twenty minutes later having read nothing, remembered nothing, and felt slightly worse. The photographs were rarely the problem. The machine around them was.
What I missed, and what I didn’t
I missed the small pleasure of seeing what people I like are up to. I did not miss the metrics — the quiet arithmetic of wondering whether a picture did well.
I moved the photographs here instead. No likes, no counts, no algorithm deciding who sees them. Just a page that loads, a sequence I chose, and whoever happens to be reading.
A note to my future self
If you are ever tempted to go back, remember this: the point was never to reach more people. The point was to keep looking closely at the world, and to leave a record that isn’t ranked, recommended or reduced to a number.