Why I Deleted My Instagram

Why You Should Delete Your Instagram and Start Your Own Blog

Own your own platform, and own yourself.


The social media graveyard

Do you remember:

  • Geocities
  • Xanga
  • LiveJournal
  • MySpace
  • Tumblr
  • Flickr
  • Google+
  • Etc…

Instagram will (eventually) join this graveyard.

What does that mean for you? Why waste all your time building up your own social capital via digital sharecropping (on InstaBook)? Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to own your own platform?


Do you own yourself?

“Until you own yourself you can’t be free. Until you own yourself, you can’t be me.” – JAY Z

When you get followers on Instagram, you don’t have direct access to them. You are dependent (enslaved) to Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) and their algorithm to reach your followers.

It is almost as if you had a phone line to your mom, friends, family, and fans .. yet InstaBook controlled the telephone lines, and would only allow you to put through 10% of the phone calls, unless you paid them money to “Boost” your signal.


What if you could only access 1% of your followers?

Eric kim abstract photos

What if you had 10,000 followers, but every time you uploaded a picture, only 100 of your followers saw it?

What if you had 10,000 followers, but every time you uploaded a photo, only 10 of your followers saw it — unless you boosted the post (paid Facebook for access to your fans?)

Almost no more organic reach on Facebook fan pages

Shot on Samsung phone with monochrome preset Dots bubble rain drops macro

That is what is going to happen with Instagram — as it has already happened to a great degree to Facebook fan pages.

The simple solution to have access to your followers:

Start your own email newsletter (I recommend mailchimp.com)

And of course, own your own website, FTP, blog platform. Own your own www.yourname.com and your own platform (WordPress.org).

Digital share cropping slavery

Don’t be a digital slave— working for Facebook for free. Providing free content and labor (your pictures and life), for nothing in return except some digital hearts, and connection.


Instagram in 2030

Fomo

You’re probably gonna be alive 10 years from now. Will Instagram still be around? Probably — except it will become more polluted and (even more) advertisement ridden like Facebook (Facebook owns Instagram, thus they are the same thing).

Let “lifestyle” folks milk Instagram. You as a photographer and visual artist ; fuck the gram. Build up yourself, your own platform, and your own wealth.

BE BOLD.
ERIC