Passionately Promoting A More Perfect World

chickadeedeedeedeedee:

sinesalvatorem:

The two social networks that I know a lot of people around me use but that I don’t really get are Instagram and FetLife.

Like, what do you use these for? I get that Instagram is for posting pictures and FetLife is for being kinky, but… Where do you get the “social network” bit from, then? What do people do, socially? How does one transition from a lurker to an active user? (eg, on Tumblr the intermediate stage entails reblogging a bunch of shit.) Why would someone use either of these sites instead of, like, Facebook, or something? And, if I joined one, would people actually talk to me? (I crave attention, in case you hadn’t noticed.)

Basically, I can’t figure out what their reason for existing is, and I’d like as much of an explanation of one (or both) as you guys can give me.

instagram in my experience is much less a social network in itself than a kind of hanger-on for other networks. It technically has chat, and I imagine you could use that as a way to interact with people, but it is mostly a place to check in on stuff you already know about rather than a place to make friends or find and build new communities.

It is a much lower-key experience than other places, you can get updates on the nice minor things in people’s lives minus the news/politics/drama onslaught, because it lacks the viral structure of most other sites.

I know a lot of people who use it, but no one for whom it is their primary social network. It is mostly just “i want to scroll through updates from my friends and favorite artists maybe without it stressing me out so much.” any involved interaction usually happens elsewhere, maybe with a mention of “hey I saw that thing you posted on instagram”

I personally like it because the atmosphere makes it easy for me, an extraordinarily shy person, to actually share lil trivial things like a neat lizard i found and not feel like i’m inflicting myself on others. I don’t know what it is about literally every other mode of interaction that does this but it is nice to have a place without that.

Interesting. I definitely know about people using it as their main social network - people asking for each other’s Instagrams at social events, people saying they only respond to messages on Instagram, people saying that Instagram is their only online presence, etc.

On the other hand, all of these people (that I’ve noticed) have been black. So maybe there’s a culture gap where there’s a subset of super-involved black people and everyone else uses it as a secondary space?