When I joined Instagram 8 years ago, everyone was posting photos of landscapes and beautiful sunsets or "artistic" photos in general. Now all you see is GIVEAWAYS, PRODUCTS, THE NEW HOT STUFF OF THE MARKET, PEOPLE POSING with the NEW HOT STUFF showing how AMAZING they are and SELFIES. In the beginning that was ok, not interesting, but it was something new and maybe a bit fun. Now it is boring and I think the whole situation sucks.
As if ads bombarding us everywhere all the time were not enough, now people like you and me, try to earn some more money by making a disgusting effort to promote products of low -most of the times- quality -not that this makes any difference- through social media. They get paid a certain amount of money for each promoted post depending on the number of their followers.
More followers, more money. Sounds fair. The bigger the audience, the bigger the impact, which translates to more money. So a huge craze has begun to get more people follow you. People even take part in reality shows to increase their followers. It's all about THEM. And this is where the disgusting part starts in my opinion. They literally sell themselves. They become a product themselves. And these people are known as INFLUENCERS.
Influencers. Influencers! Cause they influence others to buy what they promote. This is all that matters. Isn't it a bit sad? I mean ok they do nothing bad but they do nothing great either. If you take a look at Instagram, you will see posts in a row saying something like "GIVEAWAY. Like this post, tag 3 friends and make a comment to win this fantastic cream for your dehydrated heels!!! Gooo girls!! Don't miss this opportunity!!!". And 10.000 maniacs do like and comment to win this shit that costs less than 3$. What the hell is going on? Has anyone messed with our brains?
I bet so cause the Social Media thing has also side effects.. The so called FOMO is one of them. When I heard about it I had no idea what this is. It sounds like a house cleaning detergent but it's not. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out. Basically it is anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media. I mean really??
I know that many of you will think "Ok why do you still have Instagram? Why don't you sign out? Why do you even bother?" You know what? I do have Instagram and facebook and twitter and I never use them anymore. I needed them for my previous job and now I rarely check my feed. Why don't I erase them? I don't know maybe I'm nursing my FOMO LOL.
So this is why I got utterly excited when I heard about Steemit. It sounded very interesting and it really is! You communicate with others, you can express yourself the way you want through your posts, you read others' post, you interact with each other, you learn new things and there are no cheap sellers in the platform to get on your nerves with their bullshit. The way I see it that's how the future should be like.. Creative, interesting, fun and decentralised...
