45: Why I Kissed Instagram Goodbye
as well as some recommendations...
🎉 The Recommendations 🎉
📚 Demon of Unrest
WHERE: Amazon / Audible
WHY:
I somehow missed out on becoming a season pass reader for Erik Larson, but I waited for and read this book immediately after its release.
Demon of Unrest tells the origin story of the South’s secession following Lincoln’s election and it centers around Fort Sumter near Charleston and how it served as a literal symbol of rising tensions between Union and Confederate sensibilities.
📺 Everybody’s In LA
WHERE: Netflix
WHY:
I love John Mulaney. I love his comedy. I love how he refuses to exist under any kind of predictability and Everybody’s in LA is a perfect example of that.
In terms of execution, it is presented as a live, pseudo-late-night talk show with a limited run of six episodes, airing as part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival.
Each episode is an hour-ish and has a theme, guests, and pre-taped sketches devoted to the absurdity of LA.
Understanding how LA-centric it is, I wondered how long I would last with it, but my attention endured because of how niche and weird it is while wrapped in the familiar packaging of late-night.
Some of the bits are fine, and some are hilarious, but it’s worth trying to see if this is the future of late-night or just a fun experiment on Netflix.
📚 Witchcraft
WHERE: Amazon / Audible
WHY:
This was a fascinating look at the idea of witches and witchcraft and how it has evolved over the centuries.
My favorite aspect was how Gibson finessed the idea of “witches” and “witchhunts” and showed how it was applied literally and then more metaphorically in modern times and given that the chapters are oriented around each “trial,” it really helps the stories stay compact and organized so that the reader doesn’t get lost in the broader sauce of what it means about our culture and religion that we’ve been so fixated on both literal witches, but also metaphorical ones.
In the comments, let me know: what are YOU recommending this week?
✍️ MINI-ESSAY✍️
So I left Instagram a few weeks ago.
(HOLD FOR APPLAUSE)
Not like officially and not with a plan or anything. I just didn’t like the space it occupied in my mind and in my day-to-day so I deleted it off my phone and have just gone on living my life.
I mentioned this in passing in a recent episode with Jason because it’s hard not to mention something significant like that.
But the thing about it was that Instagram wasn’t really that significant to me.
I wasn’t super active on it, it wasn’t a huge spoke in the wheel of my ONLINE BRAND or WRITERLY PERSONA. The only significance was how disruptive it was.
EXAMPLE: For most of my literate life, my bedtime routine revolved around reading a few pages or chapters of a physical book before drifting off to sleep. But over the last several years, that habit was replaced by scrolling and scrolling and scrolling.
To be completely transparent, sometimes, that scrolling would lead to a fascinating article or a point of view that would shift my ideology or a context on something or someone that would give me more empathy.
But the majority of the scrolling was just mindless consumption until I decided to go to sleep. But this wasn’t limited to bedtime.
In baseball, there’s a term called “innings-eater,” which refers to a pitcher who is skilled at staying in games. Their skillset isn’t really about being a dynamic or dominant pitcher but rather about being someone who can take up the space of a game and be relied upon to go five, six, or even seven innings.
In another sense, think of an innings-eater like your fourth-best babysitter.
The fourth-best babysitter is not the babysitter you would trust to keep your kids while you go on a two-week cruise through Central Europe without cell service.
The fourth-best babysitter is really only trusted to keep your children alive and your home not on fire while you grab a very local dinner date.
I make these comparisons to elucidate what Instagram has felt like to me for a long time: skilled at consuming the innings of my time and babysitting my attention but to no greater effect.
Let me answer the questions you’re probably wondering right about now: First, do I have actual, specific reasons for leaving, and second, do I think I’m morally superior to everyone now because I’ve been off IG for a few weeks?
To the first question, yes I provide five specific reasons below.
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