Photo from Sara Hanahan's personal Instagram
Anonymous
This person is a young entrepreneur who is a cofounder of two businesses. Their profile shows his best moments, while also finding a way to integrate their businesses into it without being too obnoxious about it. This person has posted 156 pictures, follows 609 people, and has a shocking 33.7 thousand followers.
What kind of people are your close friends/family and how would they describe you?
First and foremost, I aim to surround myself with positivity above all else. This isn’t an everyday thing, people have good and bad days, but the people who I believe are intrinsically positive.
The second factor for me is intelligence. I try to surround myself with people who are smarter than myself in various fields. While I’d consider myself pretty smart, I can’t be at everything, thus, I try to make sure the people around me are smart in what I am weak in.
The third factor for me is whether they are intrinsically good. Again, people have moments of weakness where they say mean things, judge, etc. but I surround myself with people who seek the good in people the majority of the time, and who I view to be good internally.
As for how they’d describe me, I think they’d say I try hard. I make large strides to be good, positive, and intelligent, and often fall short, but I think my friends and family recognize how hard I try to be those things. The key phrase I think they’d use would be hard working.
How would you describe your personality and self on Instagram? / How do you brand yourself on social media?
I portray the best moments of my life on Instagram, thus I would say my personality is positive, motivated, and happy. I brand myself as an entrepreneur on social media.
Can you talk us through your page? Is there a certain aesthetic or vibe you are curating through your page?
I like for my page to have wide appeal, thus, I never curse in social media posts, as I want kids to be able to follow me, I rarely post about friends, as I want people who have few to feel motivated. The aesthetic I go for is quality. I don’t, or rarely, post dark or blurry pictures because I myself don’t like when others do, so I don’t. The vibe I go for is a positive vibe, happy times. In my opinion, there is so much negativity out there that I don’t want to put that out there on social media.
How would you describe your Instagram personality versus how people close to you view you?
I think people would align the two together fairly closely. However, that’s “people”. If you were to ask friends, I think they’d say it poorly depicts the entirety of my life, as it only shows the good times, and just like everyone else, my life has plenty of bad times.
Do you believe that your Instagram shows a COMPLETE picture of yourself or does it just show a specific portion of yourself?
Only shows the positive sides.
Do you think that it is possible to show a COMPLETE picture of yourself and life on this platform? Why?
Not really, because nobody can get into your head, and I think the majority of one’s life is lived in their head. Theoretically, you could post how something someone said affected you, but they’d never be able to feel it the way you did, thus, you’ll never be able to put out a complete picture.
Is Instagram inauthentic?
No, there’s a lot I don’t like about Instagram, but there’s a lot I do. I don’t think it’s inauthentic, because even if you’re pretending to be someone who you currently aren’t, it might be because you’re striving or working to be that person. When you look good, you feel good, I believe that strongly.
What do likes mean? What do followers mean?
Nothing, they’re a metric for nothing. I think they’re the most damaging part of Instagram. Assigning a metric to give you validation can be painful and it’s an endless chase, I hate it.
Charlotte Schwebel
Charlotte is a student at Colorado College. Her Instagram bio highlights her best and favorite qualities. She is a writer for the Catalyst and lives in the PRIDE hall and is a proud supporter. Charlotte has posted 235 photos on her Instagram page, has 455 followers and is following 454 people. She is not a typical user of the platform, as she periodically deletes the app and avoids its usage.
Can you think of someone in your life who is close to you and that knows you really well? How do you think that person would describe you?
Kind, smart and annoying
Can you walk us through your page and how you think yourself comes off on your page?
My most recent photos are pretty nice but when you go back as far as a year and a half ago, you actually find photos that other people posted on my account. My Instagram was hacked a lot during middle school and high school hacks because I never really posted anything. My Instagram used to be the first thing that came up when you looked up my name so I made it private because I didn’t want people or future employers to judge me based on my profile. I try to make my bio professional. I made my profile photo one of my family and I at my graduation, which has Colorado college student as the headline so that people who are looking me up but are not following me can get a vague idea of whom I am.
So you have the surface level “look nice” and then you make your photos private?
Yes so it is a happy medium between a finsta and an actual account.
When you go through peoples pages, do you think that it shows a full complete perspective of themselves?
I think it is a curated perception of them. I feel like Instagram is a place where you put “this is me in my ideal box” and your finsta is the exact opposite and shows you “at my rawest.” I think that Instagram depicts the perfect person, whatever you think that is. For some people that will be doing crazy things all the time and for other people it might just being in nature, however it always ends up only being pictures that you think are really good.
Would you say that Instagram is inauthentic as a platform and how do you view it as a whole?
I was going through my feed a few days ago and someone was looking over my shoulder and said “it's all pictures of people you know, how is this interesting at all?” I think Instagram has evolved from when I actually really used it in middle school where all your friends would want to see what you are doing and where you are, but now we have Snapchat for that. Now, when I look at my friends Instagram pages, 90% of their feeds are memes and famous people that they think are cool. When I recently redownloaded Instagram, it was because I was obsessed with Billie Eilish and I wanted to look at pictures of her and videos of her doing stuff and stalk all of her accounts, and her mom, and her dad, and her brother, and see every interview that was ever done. Instagram was great for that. But the way in which we put ourselves out to the world, I think finstas are authentic, generally and rinstas are very hyper curated, which doesn’t necessarily make them inauthentic, but if we’re defining inauthenticity as being someone who is different than you are or projecting a self that is different than you out there, it gets pretty inauthentic.
How would you compare your sisters Instagram to who she is? And how does she curate her Instagram?
Its changed a little bit now. Before she went to High Mountain Institute, which is a backcountry school in Colorado that a lot of CC kids go to, there were a lot of bathing suit photos on it, probably still are, a lot of parties, and I think it’s generally an accurate representation of what she would want people to think of her as, which is what Instagram is used for. I remember in middle school, your follow ratio was super important and people were always worried about how cool you were or how popular you were based on this ratio and the number of likes you get on a photo. There was some bullying going on through Instagram comments, so it was much more present socially for her, as a part of who she was, and attacks on it would be a personal attack, whereas for me I don’t think it has ever really been that.
So was it more like her self worth was attached to the amount of likes you got?
Yes, and comments. She’ll get around 500 likes and 50 comments on a photo of her in a bikini but if it is just a “regular” photo with friends, she will get 250/300.
Any additional comments?
Part of the reason that I keep deleting Instagram is that it's really distracting in a way that I don’t feel productive at all, I am a massive procrastinator and me looking at 10,000 photos of someone isn’t helping anything. But on Facebook, if I am procrastinating on that, I am mostly reading articles. I think it’s more about what form of procrastination you chose. For some people, Instagram is not just a way of wasting time; it means a lot more than that.
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