instagram

Have you heard of Backspaces yet? It’s an app similar to Instagram. I’m not sure when it launched but I can guarantee they are seeing a massive amount of new users because of the whole Instagram privacy policy updates yesterday. And if you weren’t aware of the Instagram news yesterday, people were all pissed off because they said they might sell your photos to businesses or whatever.

So you take a shitty pic of your dumb friend standing in line at Best Buy on Black Friday, you upload it on Instagram (a free app to share with millions), add a badass filter, type up the funniest caption ever, think of 30 random hashtags, then hit the Done button. Then Best Buy wants to buy that image to use in their marketing. Instagram sells it to them. You find out and instantly want to murder someone because you are the “photographer” and deserve to get rich off of your creativity or whatever.

Are you a photographer?

If you were a photographer, you’d be a photographer. But I’m sure you’re just another cubicle rat trying to get rich quick by doing the least amount of work. What if I told you Joe Blow down the street seen one of your pics, looked at his bare wall, printed out your pic, and hung it on his wall? Would you want to sue him? Probably.

Here’s a quick tip, why don’t you just make your account private? Oh, I already know that answer. You need an insane amount of attention. You need to post a photo of yourself every day so people can tell you how hot you are, or how cool your life is, or whatever strokes your ego. You need everyone in the world to see you. This app gives people a 24/7 behind the scenes look into your life. This is like your reality show, and you love the spotlight. Seriously, stop being so full of yourself.

I think people should be more focused on doing epic shit. Plain and simple.

Free time? What’s that?

Could you imagine how crazy people would get if Instagram just went away one day unexpectedly? People wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. They would lose it! Facebook would still be there, but then they’d be depressed they couldn’t easily add filters to their photographic masterpieces.

See what I mean? Instagram has always been free, but people take it for granted. They could have easily charged $20, $9.99, or even $1 for membership, but they kept it free. They even made it ad-free. Why? Because these people love what they do and they know they are adding value to people’s lives. I’m sure they knew back in the day that it might really catch on and there would be a way to monetize it. But they weren’t trying to get rich quick or take the lazy route.

Most people are average.

The average American wakes up early, goes to a horrible job, is depressed all day about said job, is out of control excited when 5:00 hits, races home to sit on the couch, then proceeds to eat a ton of bad food while watching 8 hours of pointless sitcoms. They will repeat this for the next four days, then they find ways to spend more than they make the other two days of the week. All while checking Instagram every 15 minutes. But if Instagram was gone, you’d find another meaningless app to fill that void.

Could you imagine all the cool shit people would be doing if they took the hour (I rounded this way down) they spend everyday on Instagram and put that towards something they love? Hell, even 20 minutes a day. I’m not opposed to Instagram at all, but when I’m not on it, I’m busting my ass doing what I love. I just think the world would be a happier place if they weren’t spending all their time doing things they hate or finding ways to escape all their problems. Fix your problems, do what you love, be happy.

Be appreciative.

At the end of the day, no matter how much you hate their terms and conditions or privacy policy, they are still providing you with a free service that allows you to express yourself, share photos with loved ones, or keep up with distant friends. They built this app on their dime for you. Why can’t people appreciate anything?

I’m not gonna lie, I used to be the guy who had hundreds and hundreds of Facebook friends. I used to think that actually meant something.

Right now I have 116 friends on there. These are strong connections. People I’ve actually met, people I’ve known for years, people I’ve done crazy things with, or people that I’ve talked to about doing work for.

One thing I hate is letting people I don’t know, know every single detail about my life. I don’t want to be “friends” with 100 strangers who live near me and then post how I’m gonna be out of town for a week. That’s like a free invite to come break into my house because they know it’s empty. And they can probably figure out where I live from my previous posts and photos.

But the main reason I hate having so many online friends is because it’s way too time consuming to keep up with all of them! Sure, I can hide people on Facebook, and I do that to almost everyone, but you can’t do that on the other social networks.

On my main Twitter account, I only follow 26 people. And 4 of those are my other accounts. On my personal Instagram account, I only follow 102 people, and 3 of those are my other accounts.

What I’m getting at is, the more people you follow, the more time you have to spend keeping up with all of them. If I don’t look at my Twitter account for a few days, that’s ok. It’s only going to take 5-10 minutes to go through everything I missed. Same with Facebook. Instagram takes a bit longer. If I miss one full day, it’s gonna take 20-30 minutes to look at everything I missed.

Now with that said, I’m bad at going a long time without looking at these apps. I’m always interested in what badass people are doing out in the world. What I should really be doing instead is being one of those badass people.

Can you imagine how much time some people waste though? Like a person who has 500-1000+ Facebook friends (and doesn’t hide any of them), follows 200-500+ celebrities on Twitter, who follows 500-1000+ people on Instagram, and has several other social networks. And what if they are religious about checking all of those accounts and not missing a single update? That’s a full-time job. For real! They will just coast through life, working a shitty job where they can be on their phone or a computer all day for personal use, ignoring people all day, not really enjoying vacations, never building their own business, never becoming a badass. Just watching and following other people doing what they could.

And just an FYI, my other Twitter and Instagram accounts have tons of people that I follow. I do not even look at those updates unless I’m tagged in someone’s post. I just follow all those people in hopes that they will follow back to gain a ton of awareness about my site or brand.

So the next time you say, “There is never enough time to get everything done!”, take a look at where you are spending your time. I’m sure a lot of it is spent on mindless activities like social networks. Don’t even get me started on cable tv.