10 Reasons No One Is Following You On Instagram

As we all know, Instagram has practically taken over the social media market. There isn’t an app I use more, besides Twitter. I LOVE Instagram, I really truly do. I love looking at pictures of my friends’ vacations, their pets, their babies, at hot girl selfies. Selfies are awesome! If you’re my friend/if I follow you, chances are I like looking at your face, so post away!

That being said, there are a handful of Instagram behaviors I am getting damn tired of, and I would like these behaviors to stop. For the good of society.

1. Hearts in your coffee foam.

Please, this isn’t Pinterest. Any coffee shop with its two cents can make a heart, or a fern, or a face, or whatever, in
your latte. I am really, really tired of the “hand holding a mug with a heart-foam” photo. It’s basically the new “girl holding a coffee mug in two hands displaying her accent nail manicure” Pinterest photo.

2. Using it as a photo album.

Instagram is for your best photos. I don’t care if you filter the hell out of them. I don’t care if you practically create a new photo out of an existing one by tinkering with the saturation, shadows, whatever. I care that you use it as a personal photograph album and post five or more photos in a row. We don’t do that here. That’s what Facebook is for. I’ll gladly look at one beach photo – I might even “like” it. But I won’t be as amused if six more follow.

3. Idiotic captions.

My biggest Instagram pet peeve these days is this photo and its accompanying caption: A portrait of a person seated, generally over dinner, with the caption “This guy/This girl.” Sometimes it comes with >>>>>, proving that “this guy” is greater than any other guy. STOP DOING THAT. You could say something nice about that person, like “This girl eats her Olive Garden pasta in a very ladylike manner.” In addition, I don’t give a shit if your friends are “the greatest friends ever in the entire world” or if “this girl changed my life, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

4. Flipagrams.

New Year’s is over! Stop making videos with loud soundtracks
of your best moments from the last year. I’m over it.

5. Overuse of hashtags.

It’s 2014! Why are we even having this discussion? Or rather, #whyareyouhashtagginglikethis? #Itdoesntmakesense. #Stopdoingitnow. #OK? Just write your thoughts out as sentences. You went to school. You can form a sentence. And don’t even get me started on hashtag mountains like this: “#girl #blueeyes #pretty #instagood #happy #life”

6. Bad concert photos.

If you’re way up in the cheap seats at Beyonce, I can’t fucking see her on the stage. So don’t post a photo of it.

7. Bad concert videos.

If you have impeccable sound quality from your seat, then great! That’s really cool. I like watching those. But if you don’t, please refrain from making concert videos to share. The noisy feedback scares my cat.

8. Quote photos.

Please, no. Please, please no. I have made it quite apparent that I hate “quotes.” When did that become a trend? I think around the time of Facebook bumper stickers; remember those? Pictures of a sunset with the words “Do more of what makes you happy” make me want to stab children. Don’t preach at me, Instagram user. “I think I like the person I am becoming,”
says the quote you just posted. Awesome. Good for you. How about you journal about that instead?

9. Instagram as relationship validation.

If your Instagram is 90% photos of your significant other with ooey-gooey captions and heart emojis, you are trying too hard to convince me things are all sunshine and daisies. And kissing photos are icky. Don’t post those.

10. Those super-fake “free flight/sunglasses” scams.

DELTA IS NOT GIVING YOU A FREE FLIGHT BECAUSE YOU POST A PICTURE. THAT IS NOT HOW LIFE WORKS.

I’m not trying to be holier than thou here – OK, maybe just a little. My Instagram habits are pretty obnoxious too, with lots of white borders and fancy filters and pictures of myself. Whatever. At least I don’t use hashtags.