It had been a long time since I posted anything on Instagram…
I previously had an account – sift666 – that I used to post photos on from 2013 to 2016, but after I stopped using it my login stopped working, and it’s been over seven years since I’ve posted on Instagram or even looked at it. I set up a new account a few days ago to suss it out.
https://www.instagram.com/frot666/
What got me started on an Instagram exploration? It was mainly from reading a blog post that said Instagram was still the forth most popular social media platform with over two billion active users. I hadn’t looked at it for seven years and was curious.
It’s really only #4 if you don’t count YouTube, but that is fair enough I think, YouTube is using AI to generate millions of views and comments, and it’s not really social media anyway. The active accounts number about 1.3 billion so two billion is a bit inaccurate. But Meta is every bit as “Alphabet” (CIA) as YouTube so I wonder how many accounts are AI on Instagram?
Looking back over my old account, I found there were 168 original images – mostly photos because that is pretty much all I used it for – and holy cow what a reminder of how different things were back then. Happier times. It was like a different world seven years ago and in many ways I wish I could go back to that world, but I guess it’s all a learning process.
The photo below was the first post I did on Instagram, 541 weeks ago in April 2013. I used to include a bunch of tags on all my posts so I’ll put them back here too, but tags don’t seem to be a thing on Instagram anymore. Tags were a total pain in the arse anyway so I won’t do them again.
#car, #purple, #coast, #nature, #new, #zealand, #frottage, #colorful, #animals, #mainecoon, #sifting, #cat, #sky, #clouds, #view, #frot, #wellington, #blue, #nice, #newzealand, #purplesky, #kilbirnie, #vivid, #colour, #sifty, #grafiti, #sift #graffiti
This was why I stopped using Instagram 365 weeks ago in August 2016 – I knew I was pissed off about something but couldn’t remember the details! Oh well, maybe seven years on I’m more inclined to work around these issues if the site could still be useful. I’ll keep that in mind and keep sussing it out.
This was a friendly horse I met long ago and posted his photo on Instagram in 2016. Clearly I used to be pretty obsessed with doing Polaroid style edits of my photos. I’m not really into that style anymore, but I do still like doing 1×1 edits of a lot of my photos and art, which works out well on Instagram and that is another part of why I’m testing out the platform again.
One of my all time favourite books is “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – it was originally written one paragraph at a time using hundreds of library catalogue cards.
That is sort of what I’m aiming for here – a blog post about Instagram, using Instagram itself to write it one post at a time, each with an image separating it.
TESTING INSTAGRAM WITH A COW
Several posts that I tried to do wouldn’t upload and I started wondering if Instagram had already blocked me, but then it all started working again so I was just being paranoid!
PS. Facebook have banned some uses of the word “cow” – you can say cow, but if you call anyone a cow, the post is instantly blocked as hate speech. So just call them a “C0W” instead!
WHAT IS THE CENSORSHIP LIKE ON INSTAGRAM?
I had quite a few problems on Facebook until I got the hang of outsmarting the AI censorship. Is Instagram the same?
This is a bit trickier to check out because I only have one account and can’t just swap to a backup if I get blocked.
So I’ll be cautious and use the same tricks that work on FB.
New Zealand has still never had a female prime minister – all three of the f@ke ones were TR@NNIES, as well as TR@YTORS.
I don’t know how this will work out, but I will keep posting on Instagram for the rest of September unless I get blocked, and will then decide whether or not to keep on using the platform
https://www.instagram.com/frot666/
Today I decided to give up on the idea of spreading my work on social media and go back to using it as a way to connect with friends who aren’t into blockchain or where that’s the easiest place to find them. So mostly messages. Deleted X from my phone cause it was all strangers and hive people.
My circle is already huge, I just wanted to gain a following so I could earn a supplementary income on content and work less but fuck it, I’m tired of that grind and it distracts me from genuine interactions. If I wanted to meet strangers online outside here I’d do it on discord
That sounds like a very good plan! It's safe to say my online circle is not huge - if I has 100 followers I'm confident I could freak half of them out and reduce it to 50 :)
Every once in a while I've had things fall into place online - Blogger around 2012, Steemit in 2016, Wordpress in 2018 (when I had 4 million hits in one year), and I keep hoping the next good one is lurking around the corner.
I've always hated Twitter but set up an account called X to suss it out in 2019 - that name and logo was a lucky guess...
https://twitter.com/X46003739
Well now we know where Musk got the logo 😆
I guess I’m lucky to have moved around during the most social time of my life so I have many contacts, but even now I think social media works best as a phone book to stay in touch with people I meet IRL. I guess hive, Wordpress and YouTube are a little different. But relying on algorithms always feel like a waste of time to me, even more after trying to work with them. It works if you have one single focus and understand the thought process of the most simple people (who the algorithms cater to) which i don’t.