What is Instagram now?

The Dark Americana Of Instagram

I stopped being a regular Instagram user around 2015. It wasn’t a political decision, but I was living overseas, enjoying my life, and realized I was happier traveling when I wasn’t trying to document every little thing. After a few years, I had basically forgotten about it and would only post on there as a proof of life system for my mom lol. The friends I wanted to check in with were ones I was talking to regularly anyways and every time I would open the app there would be more features I didn’t understand and more and more people on my feed I either didn’t care about or didn’t know.

Instagram is also, primarily, an app for sharing photos and thanks to some very gnarly body issues, I still just don’t like taking pictures of myself! (I’m working on it.)

Anyways, I finally settled back in New York last August after spending about a decade living abroad in some form or another, and decided I wanted to figure Instagram out. I cleared out a bunch of people I didn’t want to follow and, aside from one pesky notification that keeps coming up asking me if I want to follow an ex I haven’t spoken to since the Obama administration, I’m actually beginning to enjoy it. Or rather, parts of it. I’ve realized it’s best understood as a series of apps stacked on top of each other. But taken as a whole, it is, also, effectively, the last relevant social network. The only place where, if you’re of a certain age — between 28 and 45, I’d reckon — you can actually passively see what you’re friends are up to. A specific kind of digital serendipity that I now realize was one of my favorite parts of Twitter, back when that was the main social operating system for New York.

But because Instagram is, in many ways, the last true social network, when you connect that kind of feed to the infinite weirdness of America, you end up with content being watched by way more people than it probably should be. Which is how we ended up with Eve the Cuckoldress.

Last week, an Instagram user that goes by @evecuckoldress posted a video titled, “I was up at 3 AM to head to Houston for a swingers party.” It’s safe for work if you have the emotional fortitude to watch it. Instagram’s algorithm pushed it far beyond the original poster’s 160,000 followers and, like many other videos like it recently, it made the jump to X where it’s now been watched over 20 million times, according to Know Your Meme. The repost was, aptly, captioned, “Your algorithm led you to this...” Most of the memes about it I’ve seen, like the one above, are focusing on the fact the swingers party had a surprisingly good catering spread.

But it’s not an accident that the video’s viral trajectory is almost identical to Ashton Hall’s morning routine video last month or the tbh skincare video that drove conservative men insane all last year. The vacuum of Twitter has pretty clearly been replaced by Instagram. A digital platform that feels like an internet watering hole, even if its algorithm is doing its best to silo you. I finished The Pitt finale and, sure, enough some folks on my Story had also finished it. Little bits of monoculture for those of us old enough to remember what it felt like. Which, of course, makes Instagram’s decision to launch Threads even more of a hilarious misstep. But Instagram is not just one app, so it’s effectively become three different Twitters: Instagram Stories for the people you know, the grid for people you used to know (and their weddings and babies), and Reels for probing the profoundly upsetting psychic void at the heart of our country.

My friend and frequent weird Reels tormenter Katie Notopoulos has been trying to untangle Instagram rot for the last few years. Last summer, she wrote about the “Mythical Reel Pull,” or the phenomenon of Instagram pulling something unhinged into your feed. “Older people, tween boys, people who seem to be on drugs or unwell, or people who talk about sex in a way that would make you want to move to the other side of the subway car. These people didn't seem to be trying to be creators,” she wrote. “It seemed more like they just happened to post a video to Instagram, and my algorithm ‘pulled’ it from the spinning wheel of content.” And Notopoulos’ point that the Reels that Instagram keeps vomiting up don’t feel as professional or self-aware as they do on other platforms is key here.

Because of the way Instagram evolved over the last 15 years — from hipster curio to influencer marketing hub to mangled TikTok clone — the digital serendipity it provides is extremely chaotic. The bulk of its users aren’t celebrities or influencers, but normal-ish people who were suddenly given the tools and chance at the access that celebrities and influencers have. Not unlike Twitter was at its peak, but with darker contours. Because while Twitter stayed primarily text-based, to access Instagram’s virality you have to film yourself. The strange desperate heart of millennial America shuffled up and delivered randomly by an algorithm that only exists to sell you the products that live downstream of whatever kind of person it thinks you are. Right now, Instagram has decided I like “music,” so I’m getting a lot of videos of alt women trying to sell me guitar strings. Not complaining!

But it’s also likely that this version of Instagram isn’t long for the world. An antitrust case against Meta began this morning that, if the company doesn’t win, could mean the sale of both Instagram and WhatsApp. But even if Meta’s empire stays intact, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted in a podcast interview earlier this month that Reels views have flatlined and the app’s users are more interested “in reaching people.” Mosseri has interpreted this to mean that people want to be creators, which is a very Adam Mosseri way of looking at things. But what if they just want a place to see what their friends are up to without accidentally finding out what kind of catering you get at a Houston swingers party?

What’s All This Then?

My former podcast co-host (and, for now, still current friend) Luke Bailey and I are hosting a little get together for Garbage Day readers in London next week! It’s free and will be very fun I think. You can RSVP here.

It Was Rico’s Birthday If You Even Care

More Tariff Confusion

Last week, President Donald Trump appeared to announce a pause on tariffs after two days of market chaos. Except, he didn’t really. You might be confused about this, which is fair. On Wednesday, minutes before we were about to publish fyi, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately.” Classic garbled Trump slop.

The market saw the word “PAUSE” and started to recover slightly, but, unfortunately for all of our 401k’s, we still have a 10% tariff slapped across his big dumb list of countries.

Trump, apparently, realized people still didn’t really understand what he was talking about and posted another clarification on Sunday, writing, “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst! There was no Tariff “exception” announced on Friday.” And, I guess, tariffs specifically on semiconductors are coming at some point today.

If you’re looking for a way to make sense of all of this, both The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have good ticking clocks of what it was like inside of Trump world last week. It seems like Trump saw JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s Fox News interview and got cold feet. And so now, Trump is trying very hard to make it look like everything is still going to plan.

Oh, about that plan, though. For about 10 hours last week, the system that actually collects tariffs was completely down due to a glitch lmao.

The Luigi Mangione Tumblr Impersonator

If you’ve seen mentions to the Tumblr user that was claiming to be the actual killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, it’s a bit of a dark and confusing story. Several weeks ago, Tumblr user dn-838 wrote a long, fairly incoherent post saying that Luigi Mangione was innocent and that they had actually been the one to kill Thompson.

The post didn’t go super viral, but it did travel around the web a bit. It has since been deleted, but has inspired a fairly small movement of users who think everyone should do a Spartacus thing and cast reasonable doubt on the case by mass-confessing.

Dn-838 wrote a new post last week, explaining that they actually live in the UK and weren’t trying to do a Spartacus thing, but were, instead, going through a mental health crisis due to a lack of psychiatric help thanks to National Health Service cuts. Which isn’t totally unrelated to Mangione’s case, I suppose.

In classic Tumblr fashion, users are less interested in getting the real story about what happened here and are much more focused on the fact that dn-838 also said some pretty racist and homophobic stuff during their episode. So it goes.

“Bitch, You Better…” Memes Took Over X

My totally unscientific theory is that rare Vances earlier this year reinvigorated X culturally. Post-Musk, the site has cycled through its user base enough to the point where there are enough new people on there now and users are comfortable posting without any baggage. Once again, this is just a theory, but the fact we’re now getting a new, very popular trend on there every week and a half or so seems to prove that something has shifted.

Last week, a System Of A Down fan brought back the “Bitch, you better be joking” Euphoria meme and it has completely taken over the platform again. There are a lot of these edits traveling around via quote posts right now, but here is a selection of my favorites:

• “Bitch, you better feel good”

• “Big you better tell me what’s in the box”

• “Bitch, in the end it doesn’t even matter”

• “Bitch, you better walk a thousand miles”

• “Bitch, you better be the Avatar”

• “Bitch, you better call Saul”

• “Bitch, woke up this morning and got yourself a gun”

Ron’s Wild World

@rons_wild_world

Barn Tour! #tour #adventure #midwest #dad #humor #fun

I came across this thanks to X user @diabolicalspuds. There’s a man named Ron who is using TikTok to film a very calming and peaceful reality show. There’s an “episode” where he goes and checks out a friend’s barn (embedded above), another where he goes to a hibachi grill. And in case you’re curious, we’re technically on season 2 of Ron’s Wild World.

I don’t totally understand why he is doing this, but that’s not important. Earlier this month Ron went to a roller skating museum and it was as fun to watch as it looked like it was to go!

Vape Synth

Some Stray Links

• “AI Slop Farms Are Churning Out Fake Heartwarming Videos About Trump Figures”

• “Love Surrealism? You Will Probably Hate This A.I. Reboot of a Dalí Film!”

• “WTF Is a Hormbles Chormbles?”

• “Men yell in cars at me”

P.S. here’s a good chart.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***