To scroll through Instagram today is to parse a series of sponsored posts from brands, recommended Reels from people you don’t follow, and the occasional picture from a friend that’s finally surfaced after being posted several days ago. It’s not what it used to be.

Source: Everyone’s Over Instagram – The Atlantic

My photos were getting about 1/3d the number of “likes” as they had 2-3 years ago, indicating fewer and fewer followers were seeing my photos, and that fewer followers were continuing to check IG anymore.

I’ve mostly stopped posting photos on IG.

Much of this came from pandemic policies that killed people socializing with one another, and then having litte to share online.

Another has been TikTok – short form online video is killing still photo sharing.

IG has turned into a caricature of polished influencers

ts decline is about not just a loss of relevance, but a capitulation to a new era of “performance” media, in which we create online primarily to reach people we don’t know instead of the people we do. That has broader implications for Instagram’s most significant by-product: influencers.

People have found ways to get paid for their content online since long before Instagram existed. But the app certainly led to an aesthetic shift, toward pink background walls and flat-lay photography, and facilitated the rise of the modern content creator. Lavish brand deals, in which an influencer promotes a brand’s product to their audience for a fee,