The Struggle Between Aesthetics and Instagram

I’m one of those people that take instagram pictures of their food. I honestly just do it to match the aesthetic of my account or to show that I know at least two other coffee shops besides Starbucks. After looking through old photos in my phone, I realized how many unnecessary pictures I’ve taken. And by unnecessary, I mean ordinary. I take pictures of things I don’t really care about, I take pictures just for the sake of pictures. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking pictures of things without a reason behind it, but I want to collect memories and so far I haven’t been doing……any of that.

It’s hard trying to maintain a constant aesthetic in your instagram, you have to limit yourself from taking certain pictures or it will just mess up the flow of your archive. You can’t include all aspects of what you take pictures of. But then there are also the instagram accounts that have no layout. If you see the archive as a whole, it isn’t that great, but you’re left with so much freedom to take pictures of anything! This idea of trying to keep your feed looking as if everything corresponds with each other, is nuts. No one’s life is like that. There are few that take pictures that match their aesthetic inadvertently, but there aren’t many people like that. Social media is all about how people perceive you, and the pictures we take reflect who we are. For the most part it seems like everyone is trying to impress everyone else, but don’t be fooled as Phaedrus said,”the first appearance deceives many.”

Instagram is about telling stories, and by taking photos of random trees(that I don’t even like) and food that almost every fifteen year old has eaten, doesn’t tell you much. My main goal for instagram is about the significance pictures have to my life and not to my aesthetic.  I want to be able to look back through photos that might seem ordinary and come back to the memories that will carry on with me as I age. I want to remember the important and interesting moments of my life, but also have some insignificant moments as well.