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Friday 5 May 2017

3. Instagram



I recently did something wonderful and I’m going to advise everyone to do the same. I don’t expect anyone to follow my advice, they rarely do. But, I will get a perverse satisfaction in knowing that they will be all the unhappier for it.


This is what I did - I went through all the people I follow on Instagram and I unfollowed every fashion blogger, beauty blogger, “lifestyle blogger” etc. Essentially, I deleted anyone extremely pretty and/or thin, thus removing from my life a load of advertising hidden behind tinted photos.


Then, because that didn’t leave me with much going on, I followed accounts to do with nature, geography, space and “real-life” people with much harder lives than mine.


The result is, of course, that I am infinitely happier.


Because I tend to have a little Instagram peruse in bed when I first wake up, to gird my soul for the tedium of another working day, it’s essential that the messages I am feeding myself are nourishing. Every morning I get up, my mind fed and watered by images of rolling hills, armadillos and the like and, miraculously, my appearance diminishes in importance. Do I really think an Iowan farmer, driving his tractor through fields of golden corn cares that I’ve gained a few pounds? Does the giant otter care about acai bowls and matcha lattes? Of course not, it has to eat 2kg of fish a day just to survive, you fools.


And if things are really bad I can read a story about extreme hardship in Peru and tell myself to get over the inexplicable spasm of morning anxiety and be thankful for each day.


The only fly in the ointment is that the sponsored posts are slow to catch on to my transformation. An Adidas clip popped up yesterday featuring someone called Carrie Kloss. She was working out and then taking pictures of herself. She doesn't care if you take photos of her sweating, but that my friends, is because she looks like a beautiful, sweating angel. The post failed to convince me that I too would look like a beautiful, sweaty angel if I only I would wear Adidas.


So I win.

Funny that it doesn’t feel that way.

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