Instagram or Instaspam?

In the reading Interrogating Popular Culture, Stacy Takacs defines popular culture as being a “culture that is widely accessible and widely accessed; widely disseminated and widely viewed or heard or read.” One of the most favourable popular cultures of today is of course Instagram. It is a huge aspect of what makes up social media today, allowing users to post photos to their page, as well as viewing their friends, acquaintances and even strangers pictures. User’s feeds will fill up with snaps including selfies accompanied by ridiculous captions, a bowl of granola someone ate for breakfast, the beach where someone took their afternoon run and basically anything else that will get people ‘likes’.

Individuals use Instagram as a way to showcase themselves to the rest of the social media world. Takacs makes a point of how this can be demonstrated through all forms of popular cultures: “They focus less on how we are duped or pacified through our consumption of cultural commodities and more on the ways we express ourselves through these commodities.” I know when I first meet someone I typically have a stalk of their Instagram, which I’m sure most would admit to being guilty of. From the inspection of someone’s Instagram I usually get a pretty good idea of what this person has an interest in, who they’re dating and what they do with their lives.

Although you can take a look at someone’s Instagram and get a general gist of who they are, you still have to ask yourself, is this really an accurate reading of who someone is? Do people use Instagram as a tool to only show their positive attributes? Do users manipulate themselves or things they do on Instagram in order to appeal to other users? Ultimately, I believe it comes down to the particular person, but more often than not, in order to ‘fit in’ we misplace our identity by using Instagram to define ourselves as something we most definitely are not.

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