instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
instant fame
all you need is a pink wall
In October of 2010, the world was introduced to a square-shaped, Valencia-filtered, emoji-captioned sensation. Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger chose to name it Instagram, a combination of the words instant camera and telegram. The name was fitting – over the course of the last decade, these instant telegrams have become one of the most widely distributed social media artifacts in the world.
Originally meant to be a photo-editing app, Instagram has catapulted into popularity as a social media network where users can like, share, and follow each others’ accounts. It holds a reputation as a community for inspiration, and also as one where obsessive social behaviors are leveraged to drive engagement. The young audience, 60% of whom are between 18-24 years old, thrive off of a group mentality wherein images that go viral rapidly become part of a global pop culture. This led to the rise of a new consumer culture that seemingly values aesthetics over all else.
And these consumers eventually spearheaded an explosion of real-world locations and experiences created solely for the purpose of being shared on Instagram. Their enthusiasm for digital sharing enabled Instagram to hit a milestone that made its presence in the physical world and global colloquial official.
In September 2018, the word “Instagram” (and variations Instagrammed, Instagramming, Instagrammable) was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. [1]
Go on a hike. We have to Instagram this.
Walk into a restaurant. Oh my gosh, this food looks so Instagrammable.
Make plans with a friend. Look cute, okay? This has to be Insta-worthy.
There is something fascinating about the way Merriam-Webster defines the term “Instagram.” It is not a noun in reference to the platform itself. Instead, it’s a verb – in reference to the widespread human behaviors that the platform incites.
Of course, this is not unprecedented. According to Wired Magazine, “a brand reaches its apotheosis when it slips into the vernacular as a generic noun … to become a verb is even less common. The rare tech company to achieve verbal dominion over a whole category of digital experience is of course Google.” [2]
It is an accomplishment, undoubtedly. Though Google officially achieved verb status in 2006, it had already been titled the American Dialect Society’s “most useful word” as a transitive verb in 2002. It seemed to fit a linguistic niche that the world didn’t realize it was missing. It became wholly innocuous, everyday slang … but perhaps it shouldn’t have.
It turns out that the difference between a proper noun and a verb is also the difference between a tech company and the entire aggregate of widespread behaviors, beliefs, and systems that said company controls. The latter is not necessarily malicious. However, it presents a host of branded associations that influence human action beyond the original boundaries of the platform. The same Wired article argues that “‘To Google’ something is to accept the fiction that Google is both the whole information world – and the only path through it. … Google engages barely two of the five human senses and tells us that’s the whole world.” [2]
The answer largely lies in the psychology of social media platforms. A decade after its launch, Instagram now has well over a billion users and 50 billion posts. It’s become what is metaphorically described as the modern-day cave wall, a place where humans immortalize their existence through imagery and hashtags. This aligns with the increasingly widespread popularity of personal branding, defined as an effort to make one appear “different, unique, and have distinctive characteristics.” Instagram provides the perfect opportunity to produce a digital footprint of one’s personality – a representation that is often carefully curated for visual appeal. [3]
The desire for perfection arises from a natural human desire to compare themselves with others to determine societal standing. There’s a significant evolutionary purpose for this desire, but – in modern day – it’s more frequently used by social media platforms to encourage obsessive user behavior. A 2019 study conducted at Federation University Australia states that Instagram “confuses the social comparison radar … [users are] constantly trying to figure out if [they are] more attractive, smart, and accomplished than everyone else.” The plethora of idealized images creates a false sense of normalcy and “averageness,” which makes users feel worse about themselves when their own lives deviate from those ideals. [4]
Especially because Instagram is largely centered around personal photos, the platform inspires a “compare and despair” attitude for its audience. To combat the feeling of inadequacy, users obsess over perfecting their own feeds. They post only their nicest photos, using filters to blur imperfections and adding happy-go-lucky captions to prove that they too are #livingmybestlife.
This all goes on top of the substantial medical evidence that a “like” on Instagram stimulates a dopamine rush similar to the ones triggered by a variety of addictive drugs, amongst more common activities like eating and exercising. [5] Prettier photos means more likes. More likes means more dopamine. More dopamine means happier humans …
Clearly, the key is in the photos. And they can’t just be conventionally pretty. They have to fit the aesthetic norms of a social media ecosystem. They have to be bright, intriguing, unique. They have to be Instagrammable.
In an effort to create the perfect digital representation, users fixate on capturing a particular “Instagram-worthy” aesthetic in the real world. They seek Instagrammable things. They seek Instagrammable people. Numerous research papers and articles exist out there, there, and there on how Instagram impacts attributes like beauty standards and self-confidence. They’re important dialogues to recognize in the broader scope of how social media impacts society, even though we won’t be discussing how Instagram has influenced the definition of beautiful things or beautiful people here.
Instagram’s growth was dependent at least partially on the simultaneous advancement in cell phone camera quality. Today’s cell phones are capable of taking crisp shots that – when downsized in the Instagram posting process – look virtually indistinguishable from those taken by professional cameras. As high-quality photography became widely available to the masses, it also caused a shift in the essential role of photographers.
Anyone who has a phone is now a photographer. There are certainly pros out there who specialize in phone photography, considering how Apple holds a yearly competition for the best photos taken on iPhones. But the vast majority of people, and the vast majority of Instagram users, are what we will call non-professional professional photographers. Everyday, average people. You and me. Non-pro pros.
While traditional photographers generally act as external observers of an environment, this new category of non-pro pros act almost exclusively as internal inhabitants. The emphasis is not on the environment itself, but on a question that inhabitant means to answer through the photo.
Where am I?
However, this where am I is not just about the location. It is about all the connotations that a particular photograph in a particular location invokes for both the photographer and their audience.
Where am I?
What am I doing?
Who am I with?
How am I feeling?
In other words, all the things that form the foundation of one’s identity. Considering the common belief that identity is individualistic and unique, we defend the concept that there are no right answers to the questions above.
But on Instagram, it turns out that there is a right answer. The desire to create a perfect digital footprint collides with the intrinsic relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit. These spaces become vessels through which Instagram users can shape their digital identity.
When users post to Instagram, they are encouraged to “show the geographic location [of a photo], in order to attract those who are interested in the same place, and also to provide a literal interpretation to express the intent of taking the photograph." [6] These geotags are given their own category next to “Accounts” and “Tags” in the Instagram search view. “Places” is a way for users to increase the public awareness of their geographic location, alongside all of the associated meanings a location might lend its inhabitants. Popular, luxurious, sophisticated, artsy, laid-back, unique, exotic, nature-y, athletic, well-read …
On Instagram, users are brought to believe that they can elevate their virtual social status by taking photographs of – and in – the right locations. And this obsessive desire for digital sharing fundamentally transformed the way consumers design, inhabit, and interact with physical spaces.
For those unfamiliar, let’s take a field trip to the wall in question.
Search “Pink Wall by Paul Smith” on Instagram, and open the geotag that appears. You’ll see a half-page map view, indicating that the wall is somewhere in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Scroll down.
Welcome to the Pink Wall.
The Pink Wall is actually a pink building, the exterior of clothing store Paul Smith on Melrose Avenue. On any given day, it is swamped by friend groups, couples, families. It’s an LA landmark almost as iconic as the Hollywood sign. Visitors don’t pause to take a photo as they stroll down Melrose or even as they walk into the actual store (most do not, considering Paul Smith’s $1000-dollar pieces are hardly affordable for most audiences). The wall itself is the destination – a blank canvas perfect for the 300+ daily visitors to take selfie after quirky selfie.
The wall has been pink since the store opened in 2005, long before Instagram came around. It holds no historical significance. By most accounts, it qualifies more as an oversize concrete paint swatch than a mural of any artistic value. It costs $60000 a year to maintain, and apparently a janitor cleans the wall every morning, by hand. [7]
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that it looks damn good when squared and shared, the bright color popping off the Instagram Explore page. It has all the right connotations: LOOK! I went to LA. I went to Melrose Avenue. I probably got a frappuccino, and a tan, and drove down Sunset in a convertible.
This unmistakable bubblegum pink exemplifies how Instagram shifted the way consumers interact with their physical surroundings. The wall has no intrinsic value, yet users besotted by the hash- and geo-taggable will buy transglobal plane tickets just to snap a photo. As of mid-2019, #pinkwall had over 135k posts. [8]
The Pink Wall’s success, as do those of most things on Instagram, can be attributed solely to visually-driven virality. The wall encapsulates the aesthetic standards introduced by Instagram, which – for physical locations at least – boils down to three things.
The Pink Wall was not built for Instagram, but it became clear that the three visual principles it embodied were. Business owners and designers quickly realized that these attributes could be bottled into a formula for Instagram fame, a priceless advantage in the age of digital marketing. Creating locations explicitly meant to be Instagrammed developed into an entire industry of its own.
There is no better example of this than the restaurant industry, which has been seized by the desire to make everything brightly-lit, quirky, and selfie-ready. The success of a storefront no longer depended solely on the food it offered; rather, it depended on how Insta-worthy its visuals were. Although success has always been linked to aesthetic appeal, branding has become increasingly paramount with the advent of social media – for both people, and places.
As one New York cafe owner states, “Even predating social media, you’d see the places that were thoughtful about their aesthetic, cohesive in their brand identity … That wasn’t invented simultaneously with the explosion of Instagram. Good operators did that previously. I just think it’s more important than ever.” [9]
Let’s break it down.
Think about the last time you visited a museum.
Was it in a marble building inspired by Greco-Roman architecture? Were exhibits carefully roped off to deter overeager visitors? Were there security guards lurking silently in the corner of every room? Were there “no photos, please” plaques next to each priceless artifact?
Or was it bold, colorful, and practically begged to be photographed? Were there swimming pools of rubber duckies? Were there costumes and headbands for you to wear with your friends? Were there larger-than-life ice cream cones? Were there signs on every other wall screaming “photo op spot”?
Was it … pop-up?
Museums are no longer the painting-on-a-white-wall echo chamber that they have been for millennia. With the help of Instagram, modern-day museums are an entire new type of spatial experience. Built around the same aesthetic trends as the restaurants described previously, these pop-up spaces act as oversized, immersive photo sets. In search of their own Instagrammable moment, visitors pre-order tickets months in advance and stand in long queues to enter.
Museums are no longer the painting-on-a-white-wall echo chamber that they have been for millenia. With the help of social media, modern-day museums are an entirely new type of cultural institution – and represent, according to Smithsonian Magazine, the “apotheosis of Instagramization”. [13] Built around the same aesthetic trends as the restaurants described previously, these temporary exhibitions act as oversized, immersive photo sets. In search of their own Instagrammable moment, visitors pre-order tickets months in advance and stand in long queues to enter.
These museums brand themselves as “experiences”, suggesting that they hold some transformative and visceral quality for visitors. Museum founders argue that their goal is to educate visitors in a quirky and memorable way, featuring experiential art that capitalizes on new channels for expression and artistic development. Kareem Rahma, founder of the Museum of Pizza, declares that his pop-up isn’t only a “background for selfies” – instead, it’s an opportunity to learn about the history of the food industry and view the works of various artists. [14]
On the surface level, these museums seem harmless. They’re just another fad in the weekend-leisure category. In fact, they even appear to make art more personal and immersive by inviting visitors into the work itself. Why just look at art when you can become part of the art?
However, visitors to these pop-up spaces often describe a very different reality. Cathy Pedrayes, who visited The Egg House in New York, reflected that although she “did get a couple of cute pictures, it looked better online … [and it was] definitely not worth the money.” [14] Exhibits that look bold and beautiful on Instagram are disappointingly “dinky” in real life. Despite their claims to be “immersive art experiences”, these museums are ultimately not about the art – they are about monetizing a new consumer culture that is obsessed with the digital world.
The aggressive popularity of these pop-up spaces represent one of the more unfortunate side effects of not only Instagram, but technology as a whole. Technology has pushed art to be more immersive, present, and emotive. At the same time, it has also driven the rise of a digital ecosystem that encourages users to parse their lives through a camera lens – effectively preventing them from being truly “present” in any environment. And despite his claims that the Museum of Pizza is not simply one giant photoshoot, Kareem Rahma still asks, “If it wasn’t on Instagram, did it ever happen?” [14]
The concept of immersive art experiences was not always so transactional. Unlike the museums themselves, the relationship between art and technology did not pop up overnight. Digital art, projection mapping, and complex animations are all examples of how technology has ushered in a new age of creativity. In fact, many of these developments have positively impacted the creative community and society as a whole. Just think about the last time you watched your favorite Disney short.
But in other cases, we’ve strayed far from our initial desires to better connect art and audience
There is a certain level of irony to the desire to Instagram-ify. In these increasingly larger-than-life and immersive environments, visitors are expected to feel more present and connected with the space. In fact, they are expected to become part of the space itself – not as onlookers, but as inhabitants.
However, these inhabitants are denying themselves a deeper experience of not only the art in a museum or the food in a restaurant, but of the world as a whole. They are always one layer removed from reality, walking through life with a phone in front of their faces. Platforms like Instagram have driven us to believe that the real world is only as important as the number of likes it can capture in the digital one.
Instagram has changed what we believe constitutes a meaningful experience. The main attraction is no longer the visit or the location. Instead, it is what plays out in the aftermath, on the internet, amidst a flurry of hashtags and double-taps. The experience of venturing into a new space seems incomplete and almost pointless if it is not filtered, squared, and shared for the world to see.
In 2019, a particularly wet winter caused vibrant fields of poppies to explode across fields in southern California. Almost overnight, #superbloom became an Instagram sensation after several influencers posted flowery photos. Tourists flocked in from around the country, toting wide-brimmed sun hats and elaborate camera setups. Everyone wanted a vivid orange square on their feed.
But the demand far exceeded what the delicate poppy fields could handle. Walker Canyon, one of the most popular poppy field destinations, saw some 100,000 visitors over Saint Patrick’s weekend alone. The crowds wandered off the trail to pose with, pick, and eventually trample the fragile ecosystem. City officials from Lake Elsinore, where Walker Canyon is located, called it a “public safety emergency” that dramatically disturbed the lives of local residents. The canyon was eventually closed in an effort to stem the onslaught of tourists, but many simply found other ways in. [20]
Similar events have happened across the world. An Ontario sunflower farm permanently closed its doors to visitors after a few Instagram photos of the flowers went viral – and 7000 cars showed up to the small family farm over the span of 12 hours. [21] The number of visitors to scenic Horseshoe Bend, once a secluded stop near Grand Canyon National Park, has multiplied by 7 times since 2010 – the year Instagram was launched. [22] And the Travel and Tourism Board of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has asked visitors to stop geotagging its pristine lakes and forests after a sharp influx of tourists started eroding the mountainsides. [23]
All of the overtourism brought on by Instagram in these natural locations suggests a strange and ironic dichotomy between the digital and physical worlds. When you visit a place like Horseshoe Bend, the dramatic depth and permeating beauty of the canyon is too immense to be captured through a camera. So in photos, these destinations tend to seem small and dull. They look better in person.
When you visit a place like the Museum of Ice Cream, the enormous emoji decorations and hallways of rainbow lights look captivating and beautiful in the miniaturized Instagram grid. But in real life, these props seem superficial and flimsy. They look better in photos.
Between these two options are an infinitude of questions that Instagram has posed for our new, technology-driven culture. Why have we started caring so much more about the things that only look good through a filter? Why do we spend more time taking photos than seeing – really seeing – the real world? And in our pursuit to satisfy our digital selves, why are we destroying the environments that were meant to be experienced through human eyes, rather than a camera lens? What are we sacrificing when we insist on finding the right filter, caption, and hashtag for every place we go?
Over the last decade, social media became a deeply entrenched aspect of our lived experience. Our phones became natural extensions of ourselves. Their cameras became the perspective through which we determine our realities. Their apps became tools for us to explore, curate, and perfect our alternative identities.
And the real world became one giant photoshoot prop. Capture. Upload. Dispose.
Despite promising to celebrate uniqueness and creativity by bringing you “closer to the people and things you love”, Instagram promotes an alarming amount of homogeneity. According to art and design writer Kyle Chayka, a “generic hipster aesthetic” that features “Instagram-friendly reclaimed wood, industrial lighting, white walls and pops of color” has taken over cafes, restaurants, and hotel lobbies in cities across the world. [24] Likewise, it seems like almost every museum is playing with the idea of mirrors, interactive props, and designated photo-ops. There's even an official account, @insta_repeat, dedicated to documenting the uncanny uniformity seen across Instagram photos.
Instagram has set global standards for aesthetic taste. From Paris to New York, Hong Kong to London. As Chayka wonders, “Why go anywhere if it just ends up looking the same as whatever global city you started from?” [24]
The next time you venture outside, I challenge you to leave your phone in your pocket. Even better, in your car, or at home. Try to count how many times you see a particular scene, and think, oh – I should Instagram that. Try to see if you can stop yourself from reaching for your phone to take a photo. Try to see, to feel, to experience ... through your eyes only.
Written by Shirley Huang on May 8, 2020, as a final essay that ended up a little more wordy and a little less edited than expected due to the fluctuating moods of COVID-19 quarantine life. For additional Instagram content, feel free to check out @sincerely.shirley. Don’t scroll too far.