Today, I broke up with Instagram
Trust-falling into the unknown
This is the way I am with things. It’s the way I’ve always been. When I’m done, I’m done.
I can quit anything cold turkey. A bad habit, a job I hate, a relationship.
I’ve always been one of the most decisive people I know, and so today when I woke up and felt fully done with Instagram, I knew it wouldn’t take much for me to craft an exit message and delete the app. So I did.
My relationship to Instagram has never felt great. What started as a fun place to share grainy, square-cropped photos of my lunch back in 2012 turned into something beyond my wildest imaginings.
This burgeoning social media app, and the subsequent death of journalism, is the reason I have the career I have today.
I’ll spare you the long version. But the journalism landscape I graduated into in 2015 was bleak. Most big publications were eschewing full-time staff writing positions for lower paying contract positions. Traditional print media hadn’t yet figured out how to monetize in a world increasingly wanting the latest news on their phones.
I was young, I could write and I had an Instagram account. This is how I got started in the social media business. What began as me writing captions for a few clients has grown, a decade later, into the strategic marketing consultancy that bears my name.
But this was never the plan. While my millennial peers got to enjoy Instagram as a fun place to share life updates, I was always chained to (logged into) several clients’ social accounts that I was paid to manage professionally – respond to comments and DMs, live post (before scheduling apps existed). It’s a 24/7 gig. There were no days off.
Before this was “a real job,” before you could take college classes on social media management, people like me were abysmally overworked and underpaid. Our job descriptions somehow made us photographers, copy writers, graphic designers, web developers, PR people and often personal assistants all rolled into one. It’s changed for the better now, but it’s been a fuck of a decade for those of us who’ve been in the trenches since day one.
In the last few years, I’ve stopped offering full-service social media management entirely. I couldn’t charge enough for it to be worth my time. Instead, I shifted to consulting, but now instead of feeling chained to my clients’ social media accounts, I felt chained to my own.
You already know my feelings about marketing the Self on social media, so I’ll spare you. But I swore to everyone around me that if I didn’t use Instagram to promote my business, I wouldn’t be there at all.
It wasn’t until this year that I really started to run the numbers. I realized all this effort I was placing in marketing myself and my services on Instagram wasn’t paying off like it had been. My inquiries were coming from repeat clients or word of mouth. Rarely was Instagram (or all the reels I felt forced at gunpoint to make) converting new clients for me.
That unease had been sitting heavily with me until this morning, mid-meditation, when it just clicked. This isn’t earning me money. I’m not having fun. I can let go. I can be free. I can, for the first time in a decade, log the fuck off.
I’m trust-falling into the unknown here.
I have several ideas in mind about how I will continue to run my business and earn income without Instagram, the app that essentially employed me for the past 10 years. It will require creativity and inventiveness, but I’ve built my reputation on creative, inventive solutions for my clients. If I can do it for them, I know I can do it for me.
I hope to use myself as a sort of guinea pig as I pave this path. I hope I learn things that will also serve my clients. I hope to light the way and hold your hand as we walk down it together.
I have plans to get back into podcasting, a medium I really enjoyed.
A YouTube channel is in the works (in fact, I began this Substack as an incubator of sorts, to observe which posts performed the best to turn into scripts for YouTube).
I have been cultivating a Discord server for Esoteric Hot Girls.
I’m cooking up some IRL experiences where we can all maybe meet and hangout and learn something together.
I’m finding other ways to connect virtually that don’t make me feel handcuffed, that don’t force me to make CONTENT when I want to make art.
I invite you to follow along as I explore this uncharted territory. I’ll report back when I have something to share.
<3 from the ether
Syd
"... that don't force me to make content when I want to make art."
BOOM THERE IT IS. You are my hero <3 perhaps I'm not far behind...