Posts On Instagram Quotes

If you are on social media, and you are not learning, not laughing, not being inspired or not networking, then you are using it wrong.

On Instagram, I want to change my name to "Nobody" so when someone post something really stupid I can like there post and it will say... "Nobody likes this.

what you think pushes people away is what lets them in. And, God I sound like an inspirational Instagram post, but not letting people in is what pushes them away.

The trick of the internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real... which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all.

With the selfies, a photographer has finally found his place in a photograph.

Every time you post a picture of yourself to Instagram looking fake happy a fairy dies. (p. 128).

A selfie has more face and fewer feelings.

A picture is a reflection of the dreams, vision, missions and goals hidden within. Look beyond what you see.

Who knew that Instagram could result in so many people suddenly being able to earn an income just by posting photos of themselves with a certain product?

More than 200 million of Instagram's users have more than 50,000 followers, the level at which they can make a living wage by posting on behalf of brands.

Instagram posts would be art, and art was a form of commentary on life. The app would give people the gift of expression, but also escapism.

Really, you are. I know it doesn’t feel that way because everyone you know seems to be doing a better job at life than you are, but they’re not. They’re just really good at posting happy things to Facebook and Instagram.

And the point is, it’s something to aspire to, something to hope for. One day my life will match my Instagram posts. One day!

If she posted no evidence of her hectic life, I thought: she said she was busy. When she did post I thought: not too busy for Instagram.

Skippy, you're the smartest being in the galaxy, right?" "Yup, as far as both of us know." "Great, because I do not understand women. Human women. Can you give me some insight? Help a brother out?" Skippy sighed. Or imitated a sigh, it was convincing. "Joe, I have studied all the literature about human female psychology, read all the books written by and for women, downloaded every blog, every Instagram or Pinterest post, watched every program on the Lifetime channel, listened in on conversations between women, and have chatted online with billions of your females. With all of my processing power, over the equivalent of millions of years of analysis, I have come to one simple conclusion about human females." "And what's that?" I asked eagerly. "Bitches be crazy.

Brody’s problem is that he has zero respect for the opposite sex. “Does he really refuse to take selfies with a girl, or was he making that up to toy with me?” Sabrina asks. “No, that’s a real thing for him. He thinks that any pictures of him with a girl pressed up to his side would drive other potential hookups away. Selfies are a sign of commitment.” He’d expounded on this topic at some length after instructing me to keep my Tinder account active and to not tell anyone I was having a kid. “Ugh. He’s so gross.” “I signed up for a fake Instagram account so I can troll him. When he posts something, I’ll wait a day or so and then pop on to comment about how cool it is that he and my grandpa are rocking the same shirt. I’ve done that twice now and each time, I’ve seen him shoving the shirt down the apartment’s trash compactor.” Sabrina throws back her head and cackles. “You do not.” “Hey, we all have to get our jollies somewhere, right? For me, it’s negging Brody on Instagram and choking my baby mama in breathing classes.

At some point along the way, the way we receive information became more important than the information itself; it became the information. I can't count the hours I've spent scrolling on Instagram just waiting for someone to post something, anything. I'm inhabited by a desperate fear that I'll miss something, to the point that I'm willing to waste my life waiting.

You're just another one of those disconnected, easily angered zombies who haven't really worked a day in their lives. Always eager to tell other people how to live and what to say. Posting pictures of their food every single day because that's a fucking achievement for them. Preparing a meal. You know, that thing you're supposed to do so you don't starve to death?

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Facebook, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through photo slideshows at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connections of their youth through the machinery of night, who clicking and poking and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural brightness of tiny screens floating across the tops of cities contemplating likes, who bared their brains to the network and saw who got pregnant and who got fat and who’s living the life best lived by posting Instagrams of themselves staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through newly cropped profile pics with radiant cool eyes obsessing over whose ex’s new lover is the best looking ex-lover’s lover, who breaking their backs falling out of ergonomic chairs while shouting into the icy streets, Everybody look how clever I am, Look how much fun I am having, Look at this amazing party I went to, Look at how well-liked I am, Look at my effortless carefully constructed casual desperate thrown together fun, Everybody look, This is fun, Look, Look, I swear to God I am having so much fun.

Remember that high school boy in Omaha who got 30 million for his cross-media-e-commerce-integration-thingamajig? It was plastered all over the news and on CNN. We could have come up with that, we all agreed, but we were too busy living our lives for such things. So now he’s richer than Midas, and we’re reading about his fortune in the Huffington Post and thinking he should spend some of it on zit cream.

How many times have you stopped midsentence to ask a waiter to take a photo and then spent the next five minutes fucking with filters to post it on Instagram? It’s as if we have this strange obsession with proving to the world that we are, in fact, cool. Look, I’m totally guilty of this, and I’m not sure I ever intend to stop. It’s just the culture we live in now, but it’s important to keep things in perspective.

The fallen angel was about as perfect as anything she’d ever seen. Made sense, she supposed—she’d never thought angels would be anything less than perfection. But seeing one naked and up close? No one could blame her for wanting to take pictures and post to all her friends on Instagram, right?

How come she gets . . .” The answer that always worked was, “Worry about yourself.” As adults, we sometimes call this the Compare and Despair trap, where you look at someone else’s life and become envious or feel inadequate. We can’t know what other people have gone through or what’s really behind that Instagram post.

I post Instagram photos that I think of as testaments to my beauty and then obsessively check the likes to see if the internet agrees. I collect this data more than I want to admit, trying to measure my allure as objectively and brutally as possible. I want to calculate my beauty to protect myself, to understand exactly how much power and lovability I have.

Look at that eye-candy you literally have right out your window. Why aren’t you glued to this plate of glass, eating popcorn and posting Instagram photos?

Later I check Instagram, and this clown Tanya is posting a photo of some deer. Too busy to write me back, but she has time to post a photo of some deer she saw on a hike?

We live in a world where we will share everything about celebrities on social media but our friend's business posts are invisible.

After the damage was done, Instagram said it was a mistake. Funny how these mistakes happen only to conservative posts.

I have worked hard to be better. But that’s all I am: better. Not complete.

Gabriel photographed each dish to post on his Instagram story, while lamenting that his friends were so obsessed with sharing their lives, he wasn't sure if they were actually living them.

Don’t buy clothes at department stores—just take the clothes into the dressing room, post a photo of yourself on Instagram wearing them, and leave as the likes start accumulating by the hundreds.

I feel like being psychic might just be the natural result of what happens when you actually just listen to someone without being a distracted spaz plotting your next Instagram post during a conversation.

There is a comedian I follow on Instagram named Rodney Norman. He once posted his perspective on enduring hardship, saying: “You’re either a child of God or a cosmic miracle, either way you’re pretty friggin’ awesome.

He follows me on Instagram and leaves lengthy comments on my posts. Retired internet slang interspersed with earnest remarks about how the light falls on my face. Compared to the inscrutable advances of younger men, it is a relief.

Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on the New York Times to see if there’s a new thing, it’s not even about the content. It’s just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. —Aziz Ansari

If you're thinking of a social media spring clean, start with those who never comment on or like anything you post - they're just spying on you. Next, lose the ones who only contact when they have something to sell or promote - they're using you.

It occurred to Yancy that, in the time they’d known each other, he hadn’t once seen her look at her cell phone. She never texted, tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, or posted a single picture when they were together. He found this behavior alluring. The

Then, on impulse, I scroll back through my previous Instagram posts, looking at the photos of London cafes, sights, drinks, and smiling faces (mostly strangers). The whole thing is like a feel-good movie, and what's wrong with that? Loads of people use colored filters or whatever on Instagram. Well, my filter is the “this is how I'd like it to be” filter. It's not that I lie. I was in those places, even if I couldn't afford a hot chocolate. It's just I don't dwell on any of the not-so-great stuff in my life, like the commute or the prices or having to keep all my stuff in a hammock. Let alone vanilla-whey-coated eggs and abnoxious lechy flatmates. And the point is, it's something to aspire to, something to hope for. One day my life will match my Instagram posts. One day.

Facebook automatically catalogued every tiny action from its users, not just their comments and clicks but the words they typed and did not send, the posts they hovered over while scrolling and did not click, and the people's names they searched and did not befriend. They could use that data, for instance, to figure out who your closest friends were, defining the strength of the relationship with a constantly changing number between 0 and 1 they called a "friend coefficient". The people rated closest to 1 would always be at the top of your news feed.

I was too busy. But with what? I constantly obsessed over what other people—many of them complete strangers—were posting on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or my fraternity group chat. My time was being eroded by a hundred little distractions every day. I was literally clicking my life away. I realized something else—I was depleting my sexual energy in a downward spiral of online porn consumption. I was investing my sexual passions and fantasies into digitized non-companionship. I was desensitized, enervated, lonely, weary, and way too young to feel all those things at the same time.

Someone, somewhere has liked something that Jasmine has posted on Instagram. This means that Alice’s phone will continue to pop for the next ten minutes or so as everyone Jasmine knows likes the thing she posted. Alice pictures a sea of disembodied thumbs senselessly pressing hearts. She sighs.

Use social media with caution , because social media is poisonous. With just one post or tweet .Your career, reputation or life can be over. How far are you willing to go for likes, comments and retweets ? Don't be too thirsty for attention. You will be mislead by thinking everything you do is right.

It’s unfair for the burden to rest entirely on the victims’ shoulders. It shouldn’t be only the accusers who risk everything; it shouldn’t be only the aggrieved who grieve. Other people need to take real action. Not just stand in solidarity, not just post on Instagram or hang a banner or donate fifty bucks.

And they would avoid posting anything that perpetuated some of the new unhealthy trends on the app. They would never post a photo of anybody near a cliff, no matter how beautiful, because they knew that gaining a following on Instagram was becoming so desirable that people were risking their lives for perfect shots.

Instagram something with the intention of it being taken down by Instagram. Take a screenshot of it; keep a record of it. Instagram the screenshot. Screenshot that Instagram. If it is taken down again, repeat the process until all you’re posting is a screenshot of a screenshot of a screenshot . . . of the original photo.

I’m still addicted to the sensation I get watching a post go crazy with comments and likes on Instagram. Casually snapping a picture and uploading it for 28 million people provides a pretty serious high. There’s a thrill in knowing that folks all over the world might be talking about what I posted. It’s quite a rush to create a tidal wave like that whenever I want.

Google has lucrative partnerships with all the large vaccine manufacturers, including a $715 million partnership with GlaxoSmithKline.52 Verily also owns a business that tests for COVID infection.53 Google was not the only social media platform to ban content that contradicts the official HCQ narrative. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, MailChimp, and virtually every other Big Tech platform began scrubbing information demonstrating HCQ’s efficacy, replacing it with industry propaganda generated by one of the Dr. Fauci/Gates-controlled public health agencies: HHS, NIH and WHO. When President Trump later suggested that Dr. Fauci was not being truthful about hydroxychloroquine, social media responded by removing his posts.

What if we are attempting to exchange wisdom for shortcuts? One requires years of life experiences, while the other simply requires a Google search. Today, we face a huge gap between who we are and who we want to be simply because we can actually see that gap better than ever before. By just opening Instagram or reading Facebook posts, we see a different, perhaps ideal, self we wish we were.

Conscious fun takes effort. This seeming paradox—Why should fun be work?—stops us in our tracks. So we overindulge in effortless fun (scrolling through Instagram posts about dinner parties), and underindulge in effortful fun (throwing a dinner party ourselves). But “although minutes spent in boredom or anxiety pass slowly,” writes Grudin, “they nonetheless add up to years which are void of memory.

And she figures it’s your fault that things have changed.” “That’s just idiotic!” Ximena said. “I know!” I said. “It’s like Savanna being mad at me for having been in a TV commercial once. It makes no sense.” “How do you know all this?” asked Ximena. “Did she tell you?” “No!” I said. “Did you know about the note beforehand?” “No!” I said. Summer rescued me. “So what did Ellie say when she read Maya’s note?” she asked Ximena. “Oh, she was so mad,” answered Ximena. “She and Savanna want to go all out on Maya, post something super-mean about her on Facebook or whatever. Then Miles drew this cartoon. They want to post it on Instagram.” She nodded for Summer to hand me a folded-up piece of loose-leaf paper, which I opened. On it was a crude drawing of a girl (who was obviously Maya) kissing a boy (who was obviously Auggie Pullman).

There were absolutely amazing photographs everywhere, on everyone's Facebook page and everyone's iPhone and Instagram, just floating around in cyberspace for eternity. People took hundreds and thousands of digital pictures; one or two, even twenty or a hundred, were bound to be great. All anyone had to do was click through them all and post the ones they liked, deleting the rest. But using film meant you never knew what was going to be a good picture, let alone a great one, until you were standing there looking at a contact sheet with a magnifying glass and deciding which to print. Maybe nobody cared anymore, but then again, writers probably felt the same way when word processors were invented. Anyone with a story and a keyboard could write their memoir now, write the great American novel, or tweet a 140-character trope that gets retweeted and it read by hundreds of people every hour of every day.

Instagram and Facebook, she’d found out, literally rewired your brain. Likes and comments on a user’s post were found to release bursts of dopamine, which made the user happy. That made sense; everyone enjoyed getting likes on a Facebook post. But this essentially turned the phone into a personal dopamine stimulator. Brain scans showed that in cases of people who were addicted to social media, the brain rewired itself, making them desire more likes, or retweets, or smiling emojis.

But once a website starts to make decisions about what it’s going to allow and not allow on its platform, it goes from a “platform” to a “publisher,” at least in the eyes of the law. Once Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram start to ban people or remove content, they’re no longer just interested observers of content who sit back and let their users run the show. They’re publishers just like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Clearly, this is what they’re doing. They’ve admitted it themselves.

Can I step away from this digital maw? Will my voice still matter if no one can hear it? Ca silence feel more pressing and important than a ping? Instead of imagining the next text, the next tweet, the next Instagram post, the next flash of what my cousin did over spring break or what my neighbour ate for breakfast, what if I could imagine living in this moment, without wanting more? The questions whether or not your stuff sparks joy. The question is: Can you spark joy all by yourself? Do you remember how that feels?

So, fast-forward to the Smollett post. After I reposted it, and called them out for taking it down, I received an outpouring of thousands of comments and DMs, some even showing videos, of how Instagram was interfering with my following. Some weren’t allowed to like my posts or my father’s. The little heart would light up, and then it would flash back off. Some commented, “Hey Don, I had to follow you three times this week and I never unfollowed you.” With others, it was, “Don, I was blocked out of my account for twenty-four hours for liking one of your feeds.

For example, Twitter and Facebook—both of which happily hosted Kim Kardashian’s nude bottom—removed the word “vagina” from an advertisement marketing a book about female anatomy, written by prominent gynecologist Dr. Jen Gunter.21 Similarly, journalist Sarah Lacy found that she was unable to advertise her book, entitled A Uterus Is a Feature, on Facebook.22 Plus-sized women have had their Instagram accounts removed for posting selfies in bikinis—something that skinny women do all the time without reprisal.23 Both platforms have also blocked advertisements for information about teen pregnancy, proper bra fitting, and gynecologist visits.24

It was a wake-up call to me to learn that Airbnb was by no means unique: Instagram started as a location-based social network called Burbn (which had an optional photo feature). It attracted a core group of users and more than $500,000 in funding. And yet the founders realized that its users were flocking to only one part of the app—the photos and filters. They had a meeting, which one of the founders recounts like this: “We sat down and said, ‘What are we going to work on next? How are we going to evolve this product into something millions of people will want to use? What is the one thing that makes this product unique and interesting?’”7 The service soon retooled to become Instagram as we know it: a mobile app for posting photos with filters. The result? One hundred thousand users within a week of relaunching. Within eighteen months, the founders sold Instagram to Facebook for $1 billion. I know that seems simple, that the marketing lesson from Instragram is that they made a product that was just awesome. But that’s good news for you—it means there’s no secret sauce, and the second your product gets to be that awesome, you can see similar results. Just look at Snapchat, which essentially followed the same playbook by innovating in the mobile photo app space, blew up with young people, and skyrocketed to a $3.5-billion-dollar valuation with next-to-no marketing.

God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead. Jazz was dead, pop music, disco, rap, classical music, dead. Culture was dead. Decency, society, family values were dead. The past was dead. History was dead. The welfare state was dead. Politics was dead. Democracy was dead. Communism, fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, all dead, and marxism, dead, feminism, also dead. Political correctness, dead. Racism was dead. Religion was dead. Thought was dead. Hope was dead. Truth and fiction were both dead. The media was dead. The internet was dead. Twitter, instagram, facebook, google, dead. Love was dead. Death was dead. A great many things were dead. Some, though, weren’t, or weren’t dead yet. Life wasn’t yet dead. Revolution wasn’t dead. Racial equality wasn’t dead. Hatred wasn’t dead. But the computer? Dead. TV? Dead. Radio? Dead. Mobiles were dead. Batteries were dead. Marriages were dead, sex lives were dead, conversation was dead. Leaves were dead. Flowers were dead, dead in their water. Imagine being haunted by the ghosts of all these dead things. Imagine being haunted by the ghost of a flower. No, imagine being haunted (if there were such a thing as being haunted, rather than just neurosis or psychosis) by the ghost (if there were such a thing as ghosts, rather than just imagination) of a flower. Ghosts themselves weren’t dead, not exactly. Instead, the following questions came up: “are ghosts dead are ghosts dead or alive are ghosts deadly” but in any case forget ghosts, put them out of your mind because this isn’t a ghost story, though it’s the dead of winter when it happens, a bright sunny post-millennial global-warming Christmas Eve morning (Christmas, too, dead), and it’s about real things really happening in the real world involving real people in real time on the real earth (uh huh, earth, also dead):

When they got to the table, it was easy to recognize some of the dishes just from their pictures in the book. Skillet Broken Lasagna, which smelled of garlic and bright tomato; Fluffy Popovers with Melted Brie and Blackberry Jam (she started eating that the minute she picked it up and could have cried at the sweet, creamy-cheesy contrast to the crisp browned dough). There were also the two versions of the coconut rice, of course, and Trista had placed them next to the platter of gorgeously browned crispy baked chicken with a glass bowl of hot honey, specked with red pepper flakes, next to it, and in front of the beautifully grilled shrimp with serrano brown sugar sauce. Every dish was worthy of an Instagram picture. Which made sense, since Trista had, as Aja had pointed out, done quite a lot of food porn postings. There was also Cool Ranch Taco Salad on the table, which Margo had been tempted to make but, as with the shrimp dish, given that she had been ready to bail on the idea of coming right up to the last second, had thought better of, lest she have taco salad for ten that needed to be eaten in two days. Not that she couldn't have finished all the Doritos that went on top that quickly. But there hadn't been a Dorito in her house since college, and she kind of thought it ought to be a cause for celebration when she finally brought them back over the threshold of Calvin's ex-house. The Deviled Eggs were there too, thank goodness, and tons of them. They were creamy and crunchy and savory, sweet and- thanks to an unexpected pocket of jalapeño- hot, all at the same time. Classic party food. Classic church potluck food too. Whoever made those knew that deviled eggs were almost as compulsively delicious as potato chips with French onion dip. And, arguably, more healthful. Depending on which poison you were okay with and which you were trying to avoid. There was a gorgeous galaxy-colored ceramic plate of balsamic-glazed brussels sprouts, with, from what Margo remembered of the recipe, crispy bacon crumbles, sour cranberries, walnuts, and blue cheese, which was- Margo tasted it with hope and was not disappointed- creamy Gorgonzola Dolce.

I scan my apps to find a new notification—it’s from Instagram. One new follower. I gasp when I open it. Graeme Cracker_Collins has followed me. Graham Cracker. My own private nickname for him. My heart gallops and my chest aches. I click on the tiny photo of Graeme, his face smiling at me from underneath his windswept hair. He’s posted three photos from the Galápagos, and one of them is of me, although you can’t exactly tell. It’s the one he snapped in the highlands. A sunburst obscures most of my face, casting it in shadow, but the outline of my profile cuts a dramatic figure against the trees. I tap on the photo to read the caption. Graeme Cracker_Collins: To the woman who inspired me to rejoin the world, “thank you” will never be enough. Graeme already has more than two hundred followers, many of whom have left messages of love and welcome. Clearly, friends and extended family. Ryan_Collins206 commented on the photo of me: “Who is this woman? I need to give her a kiss.” I swallow past the painful lump in my throat. Graeme has officially returned to the world. Heart cracking, I follow him back.

Systrom and Krieger didn’t want any of this to be on Instagram and knew, as the site got bigger, that they wouldn’t be able to comb through everything to delete the worst stuff manually. After just nine months, the app already hosted 150 million photos, with users posting 15 photos per second. So they brainstormed a way to automatically detect the worst content and prevent it from going up, to preserve Instagram’s fledgling brand. “Don’t do that!” Zollman said. “If we start proactively reviewing content, we are legally liable for all of it. If anyone found out, we’d have to personally review every piece of content before it goes up, which is impossible.” She was right. According to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, nobody who provided an “interactive computer service” was considered the “publisher or speaker” of the information, legally speaking, unless they exerted editorial control before that content was posted. The 1996 law was Congress’s attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet, but was also crucial to protecting internet companies from legal liability for things like defamation.

Evan slung his arm over my shoulder. “That’s my mom and dad,” he pointed to a couple approaching us as families trickled onto the field. “Mom! Get a picture of me and she-wolf?” “Sure, sure,” the strawberry blonde lady said, digging in her purse. “Aha! Here it is. I’m Elaine, Evan’s mom,” she announced to us. “Now smile!” I smiled but just before the flash went off Evan kissed my cheek. I gasped in surprise, probably making the funniest face known to man. Evan snatched the camera from his mom and laughed. “That is totally going to be my facebook profile pic. Take a look she-wolf.” He turned the camera so I could see the image on the screen. Oh, God. I narrowed my eyes and pointed a finger at Evan. “You better promise me that, that picture never sees the light of day.” “Well, technically it’s already seen the light of day, seeing as it’s the morning and all.” “Evan, you know what I mean.” “Fine,” he lowered his head, “I won’t post it on facebook.” “Or twitter, instagram, or any other picture sharing site. Got it? Maybe you should just delete it now?” “Nah,” Evan grinned. “I’m keeping this forever and ever as proof that I kissed the she-wolf.

Being capable and productive feels somewhat beside the point these days. Either you're popular, and therefore exciting and successful and a winner, or you're unpopular, and therefore unimportant and invisible and devoid of redeeming value. Being capable was much more celebrated in the 1970s when I was growing up. People had real jobs that lasted a lifetime back then, and many workers seemed to embrace the promise that if you worked steadily and capably for years, you would be rewarded for it. Even without those rewards, working hard and knowing how to do things seemed like worthwhile enterprises in themselves. "Can she back a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?" my mom used to sing while rolling out pie crust with her swift, dexterous hands. Sexist as its message may have been, the modern version of that song might be worse. It would center around taking carefully staged and filtered photos of your pretty face next to a piece of cherry pie and posting it to your Instagram account, to be rewarded with two thousand red hearts for your efforts. Making food, tasting it, sharing it, understanding yourself as a human who can do things - all of this is flattened down to nothing, now, since only one or two people would ever know about it. Better to feed two thousand strangers an illusion than engage in real work to limited ends.

Most of my friends put their preferred pronoun in their Instagram bios—he/she, him/her, they/their—but I respond to any and all of them. I like to think of it as collecting pronouns: the more I get, the more fun I’m having. To get the obvious out of the way, because that’s apparently important to people, I think of myself as post-gender. I was trying to figure out how to explain that because sometimes it’s a paragraph and sometimes it’s a term paper depending on who I’m talking to, and I have no idea who will be reading this in the aftermath. Then I noticed that one of my fellow passengers has a cat with him, and that’s perfect. When you visit a friend and find they have a cat, you just see it as a cat in all its pure catness, it doesn’t require further definition. You’ll probably get a name, and if you ask, whether it was born male or female, but even after you have that information you still don’t think of it any differently. It’s not a He-Cat or a She-Cat or a They-Cat. It’s just a cat. And unless the cat’s name has any gender-specific connotations you’ll probably forget pretty fast which gender it was born into. My name is Theo, and by that logic, I am a cat. What I was or was not born into has nothing to do with how I see myself. It’s not about going from one gender to another, or suggesting that they don’t exist. Some of my friends say that the moment you talk about gender you invalidate the conversation because you’re accepting the limits of outmoded paradigms, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I just think gender shouldn’t matter. If you’re a man, aren’t there moments when you feel more female, like when you’re listening to music, or your cheek is being gently stroked, or you see a spectacularly handsome man walk into the room? If you’re a woman, aren’t there moments when you feel more male, when you have to be strong in the face of conflict, or stand behind your opinion, or when a spectacularly beautiful woman walks into the room? Well, in those moments, you are all of those things, so why deny that part of yourself? For me, it’s not about being binary or non-binary. It’s about moving the needle to the center of the dial and accepting all definitions as equally true while remaining free to shift in emphasis from moment to moment. It’s about being a Person, not a She-Person or a He-Person or a They-Person. (...) When you go into a clothing store, you don’t just go to the “one size fits all” rack. You look for clothes that fit your waist, hips, legs, chest, and neck, clothes that complement your form and shape, and reflect not just how you see yourself but how you want to be seen by others. If it’s still not quite right, and you can afford it, you get the clothes tailored to fit exactly who you are. That’s what I’m doing. Post-gender is one term for it. Another might be tailored gender. Maybe bespoke gender. But definitely not one-size-fits-all. The world doesn’t get to decide what best fits who I am and how I choose to be seen. I do.

Cue thousands of Instagram posts encouraging the no-contact rule and implicitly shaming anyone who continues a relationship with their ex. But the story of relationships and their endings is far too complex for us to apply solution-focused changes aimed at reducing pain. Still, every one of my friends and every therapist on Instagram advises against talking to an ex. No contact, cold turkey, zero—a crazy idea to me. In my work, I’ve noticed that more than half of my clients will continue to communicate with their former partner, maintaining some form of connection. Even a friendship. This happens despite the discouraging advice recommending a complete cutoff. But we, as a society, might be better off trying to understand our need to continue a connection with an ex than condemning or strongly advising against it. Maybe it’s time we reconsidered our attitude toward post-breakup connections. Instead of dismissing them as unhealthy, we could try to understand the motives behind our choice to stay in touch. After all, each relationship and breakup is unique, and the two (or more) people involved in a ruptured relationship are in the best position to judge what serves their emotional needs and personal growth. The idea of cutting an ex out of your life completely is also extremely heteronormative. Many queer people (like me) don’t have their family of origin to fall back on. Our “families” are therefore sometimes our friends, partners, and ex-partners, the people we form deep connections with. Alex was my family for ten years. So, for me, cutting him out of my life entirely wasn’t so simple.

By March, front-line doctors around the world were spontaneously reporting miraculous results following early treatment with HCQ, and this prompted growing anxiety for Pharma. On March 13, a Michigan doctor and trader, Dr. James Todaro, M.D., tweeted his review of HCQ as an effective COVID treatment, including a link to a public Google doc.48,49 Google quietly scrubbed Dr. Todaro’s memo. This was six days before the President endorsed HCQ. Google apparently didn’t want users to think Todaro’s message was missing; rather, the Big Tech platform wanted the public to believe that Todaro’s memo never even existed. Google has a long history of suppressing information that challenges vaccine industry profits. Google’s parent company Alphabet owns several vaccine companies, including Verily, as well as Vaccitech, a company banking on flu, prostate cancer, and COVID vaccines.50,51 Google has lucrative partnerships with all the large vaccine manufacturers, including a $715 million partnership with GlaxoSmithKline.52 Verily also owns a business that tests for COVID infection.53 Google was not the only social media platform to ban content that contradicts the official HCQ narrative. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, MailChimp, and virtually every other Big Tech platform began scrubbing information demonstrating HCQ’s efficacy, replacing it with industry propaganda generated by one of the Dr. Fauci/Gates-controlled public health agencies: HHS, NIH and WHO. When President Trump later suggested that Dr. Fauci was not being truthful about hydroxychloroquine, social media responded by removing his posts.

Excuse me,” someone said, interrupting a lively discussion about whom they’d each buy a drink for in the cantina. The whole line looked up. There were two women standing on the sidewalk with bakery boxes. One of them cleared her throat. “We heard that people were camping out for Star Wars . . .” “That’s us!” Troy said, only slightly less enthusiastically than he’d said it yesterday. “Where’s everybody else?” she asked. “Are they around the back? Do you do this in shifts?” “It’s just us,” Elena said. “We’re the Cupcake Gals,” the other woman said. “We thought we’d bring Star Wars cupcakes? For the line?” “Great!” Troy said. The Cupcake Gals held on tight to their boxes. “It’s just . . .” the first woman said, “we were going to take a photo of the whole line, and post it on Instagram . . .” “I can help you there!” Elena said. Those cupcakes were not going to just walk away. Not on Elena’s watch. Elena took a selfie of their line, the Cupcake Gals and a theater employee all holding Star Wars cupcakes—it looked like a snapshot from a crowd— and promised to post it across all her channels. The lighting was perfect. Magic hour, no filter necessary. #CupcakeGals #TheForceACAKEns #SalaciousCrumbs The Gals were completely satisfied and left both boxes of cupcakes. “This is the first time I’ve been happy that there were only three of us,” Elena said, helping herself to a second cupcake. It was frosted to look like Chewbacca. “You saved these cupcakes,” Gabe said. “Those women were going to walk away with them.” “I know,” Elena said. “I could see it in their eyes. I would’ve stopped at nothing to change their minds.” “Thank God they were satisfied by a selfie then,” Gabe said. His cupcake looked like Darth Vader, and his tongue was black. “I’m really good at selfies,” Elena said. “Especially for someone with short arms.” “Great job,” Troy said. “You’ll make someone a great provider someday.” “That day is today,” Elena said, leaning back against the theater wall. “You’re both welcome.” “Errrggh,” Troy said, kicking his feet out. “Cupcake coma.” “How many did you eat?” Gabe asked. “Four,” Troy said. “I took down the Jedi Council. Time for a little midday siesta—the Force asleepens.

Self-Obsession & Self-Presentation on Social-Media" Some people always post their cars/bikes photos because they love their cars/bikes so much. Some people always post their dogs/cats/birds/fish/pets photos because they love their pets so much. Some people always post their children’s/families photos because they love their children/families so much. Some people always post their daily happy/sad moments because they love sharing their daily lives so much. Some people always post their poems/songs/novels/writings because they love being poets/lyricists/novelists/writers so much. Some people always copy paste other people’s writings/quotes without mentioning the actual writers name because they love seeking attention/fame so much. [Unacceptable & Illegal] Some people always post their plants/garden’s photos because they love planting/gardening so much. Some people always post their art/paintings because they love their creativity so much. Some people always post their home-made food because they love cooking/thoughtful-presentation so much. Some people always post their makeup/hairstyles selfies because they love wearing makeup/doing hair so much. Some people always post their party related photos because they love those parties so much. Some people always post their travel related photos because they love traveling so much. Some people always post their selfies because they love taking selfies so much. Some people always post restaurant/street-foods because they love eating in restaurants/streets so much. Some people always post their job-related photos because they love their jobs so much. Some people always post religious things because they love spreading their religion so much. Some people always post political things because they love politics/power so much. Some people always post inspirational messages because they love being spiritual. Some people always share others posts because they love sharing links so much. Some people always post their creative photographs because they love photography so much. Some people always post their business-related products because they love advertising so much. And some people always post complaints about other people’s post because they love complaining so much

She clicks on the last slide, and that’s when it happens. “Me So Horny” blasts out of the speakers and my video, mine and Peter’s, flashes on the projector screen. Someone has taken the video from Anonybitch’s Instagram and put their own soundtrack to it. They’ve edited it too, so I bop up and down on Peter’s lap at triple speed to the beat. Oh no no no no. Please, no. Everything happens at once. People are shrieking and laughing and pointing and going “Oooh!” Mr. Vasquez is jumping up to unplug the projector, and then Peter’s running onstage, grabbing the microphone out of a stunned Reena’s hand. “Whoever did that is a piece of garbage. And not that it’s anybody’s fucking business, but Lara Jean and I did not have sex in the hot tub.” My ears are ringing, and people are twisting around in their seats to look at me and then shifting back around to look at Peter. “All we did was kiss, so fuck off!” Mr. Vasquez, the junior class advisor, is trying to grab the mic back from Peter, but Peter manages to maintain control of it. He holds the mic up high and yells out, “I’m gonna find whoever did this and kick their ass!” In the scuffle, he drops the mic. People are cheering and laughing. Peter’s being frog-marched off the stage, and he frantically looks out into the audience. He’s looking for me. The assembly breaks up then, and everyone starts filing out the doors, but I stay low in my seat. Chris comes and finds me, face alight. She grabs me by the shoulders. “Ummm, that was crazy! He freaking dropped the F bomb twice!” I am still in a state of shock, maybe. A video of me and Peter hot and heavy was just on the projector screen, and everyone saw Mr. Vasquez, seventy-year-old Mr. Glebe who doesn’t even know what Instagram is. The only passionate kiss of my life and everybody saw. Chris shakes my shoulders. “Lara Jean! Are you okay?” I nod mutely, and she releases me. “He’s kicking whoever did it’s ass? I’d love to see that!” She snorts and throws her head back like a wild pony. “I mean, the boy’s an idiot if he thinks for one second it wasn’t Gen who posted that video. Like, wow, those are some serious blinders, y’know?” Chris stops short and examines my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Everybody saw us.” “Yeah…that sucked. I’m sure that was Gen’s handiwork. She must’ve gotten one of her little minions to sneak it onto Reena’s PowerPoint.” Chris shakes her head in disgust. “She’s such a bitch. I’m glad Peter set the record straight, though. Like, I hate to give him credit, but that was an act of chivalry. No guy has ever set the record straight for me.

While humans have been bred over millennia to chase the pleasant, run from the unpleasant, and zone out in the face of neutral stimuli, meditation, as we’ve discussed, provides an alternative: the ability to engage with it all fully. This skill allows you, however briefly, to step off the treadmill of getting and doing. Many of us assume that we will finally be happy and complete when all of our wishes are fulfilled—when we hit the lottery, master the Stanky Leg, or get more likes on our Instagram posts. It’s the primordial lie we are constantly telling and retelling ourselves. But this is to confuse happiness with excitement. All of which inexorably leads to another question: what is happiness, anyway? For years I asked tons of smart people about this and never got a truly satisfying answer. Then one night over dinner, I put the question to my friend Dr. Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, author, and meditator. He said, “More of the good stuff and less of the bad.” Initially, I was unmoved. Over time, though, I began to see the wisdom of this modest assertion.

¿Por qué no creó Rupert Murdoch The Huffington Post? ¿Por qué no lanzó AT&T Skype, ni Visa creó PayPal? La CNN podría haber creado Twitter, visto que de frases cortas e impactantes como titulares se trata, ¿no? General Motors o Hertz podrían haber lanzado Uber, y Marriott, Airbnb. Gannett podría haber creado Craigslist o Kijiji. Yellow Pages podría haber fundado perfectamente eBay. Microsoft tenía la posibilidad de crear Google o cualquier modelo de negocio basado en internet más que en el ordenador personal. ¿Por qué no inventó la NBC YouTube? Sony podría haberse adelantado al iTunes de Apple. ¿Dónde estaba Kodak cuando se inventaron Instagram o Pinterest? ¿Y si People o Newsweek hubieran creado BuzzFeed o Mashable?

She moves deftly and quietly through misogyny. In recent years her voice has become more pervasive, more intriguing. She has been too easily labelled and stuffed back down, she is careful not to wear a sticker defending herself. She rose lately as ‘feminist’, but that was torn away from her, made distasteful, attacked and vilified. So now she is creeping in simply as female, as feminine, as a billion different women pursuing a million different injustices. She is at every corner; she is calling us out. She isn’t yelling. She is writing, singing, tweeting and sharing. She is meeting with other females, over cake, in meditation, with coffee and babies, with tea and trumpets. She is coaxing the males into their better power, requesting that they see, do and be better. She is recreating the earth in personal, unique and subtle ways. So small these steps she takes that one day we will turn around and say, ‘We women did that... We snuck our lives onto the agenda without it being noticed. We tore down the patriarchy one sentence at a time, one text, one status update, one outfit, one hairy armpit, one truth, one smile, one grimace, one Instagram post at a time.’ She does not go head to head with The Emperor. That failed. She cannot win at his game.

It occurred to Yancy that, in the time they’d known each other, he hadn’t once seen her look at her cell phone. She never texted, tweeted, Facebooked, Instagrammed, or posted a single picture when they were together. He found this behavior alluring.

We can’t know what other people have gone through or what’s really behind that Instagram post.

That’s an Instagram post. Give me something real.” Marissa flinches. In those few words, Avery has cut to the core of what their marriage has become: curated moments served up in public, while in private the emptiness between them slowly expands.

Tell me about one of your favorite moments together, Marissa.” There are so many for Marissa to choose from, whole albums of memories. She selects one of the glossy snapshots: “Just last year, Matthew and I were invited to a black-tie dinner at the Kennedy Center. It was magical. We hired a car and driver and danced all night. He looked so handsome. It was because of his work on behalf of the World Wildlife Fund that we went—” Avery cuts her off. “That’s an Instagram post. Give me something real.” Marissa flinches. In those few words, Avery has cut to the core of what their marriage has become: curated moments served up in public, while in private the emptiness between them slowly expands.

We were that guy from Earth Beat, the one I said I wanted to be, the one who only had joy and love in his heart.” I had tried everything possible to find that guy from Earth Beat. I posted on Facebook, Instagram but just like Keyser Söze, he didn’t seem to exist.

You can see this when a thin, white, rich self-help influencer posts "Choose Joy" on her Instagram....Her belief that the decision to be a positive person was the key to her joyful life reveals she really does not grasp just how much of her success is due to privileges beyond her control.

What features are important to Post House For Rent Free Every property is different—and each one has features that make it stand out from the rest of the rental opportunities nearby. Knowing how to bring those to the forefront to attract new tenants, however, is the challenge. Luckily, there are a few simple ways to highlight these features with minimal photography skills and budget. If you do it right, you can also start building a brand for yourself, thanks to engaging videos, improved Instagram posts and more. Keep these tips in mind as you prepare for the spring and summer rental season.

Posting on Instagram is essentially exhibitionism without having to take your clothes off. Although, you’re welcome to do that too.

I scrolled through my personal accounts, but nothing really caught my eye, so I switched over to the Instagram account I'd made for Longganisa. She was way more popular than I was, but I hadn't uploaded a new pic in a week and her fans were not pleased. I made a quick post of her splayed out on the sidewalk the day she gave up mid-run. A quick caption of "My human is mad I stopped running to sploot, but doesn't she know it's important to stretch?" and there we go. Enough to appease her fans for a couple of days, at least.

Tavel noted that there are three distinct strategy phases startups, and by extension new products, go through: engagement, retention, and self-perpetuating. Startups that go through all three tend to turn into multibillion-dollar companies, whereas startups that get stuck in one phase commonly fail. The goal of the first phase is to get customers using your product and completing the core action, like posting a photo to Instagram. This is a sign they’re engaged with your product, and we could say that completing the core action is a success metric that supports an engagement goal.

Find love and reproduce = using Tinder Connect and bond with others = browsing Facebook Win social acceptance and approval = posting on Instagram Reduce uncertainty = searching on Google Achieve status and prestige = playing video games

Find love and reproduce = using Tinder Connect and bond with others = browsing Facebook Win social acceptance and approval = posting on Instagram Reduce uncertainty = searching on Google Achieve status and prestige = playing video games Your habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. New versions of old vices. The underlying motives behind human behavior remain the same. The specific habits we perform differ based on the period of history.

This is even more astounding to me, given that Mary herself was part of the community of Nazareth, which was full of ordinary people who held bad theology, who gossiped too much, who let political disagreements become wedges between them, and who suffered from the first-century version of taking an ancient promise ("For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord...") out of context and slapping it on every yearbook photo and Instagram post. Because even God was born into a dysfunctional family of faith, and God did not wait around for ideal conditions before showing up. We don't like to think of God being vulnerable like that, just as we often don't like to think of ourselves being vulnerable like that. We don't like to think about god needing anyone, because what good is God for us mortals, for those of us who know we need others, if God is needy too?

The dog account’s popularity spread beyond her family and friends to a few thousand people. But on a Monday night in December 2012, the account started gaining fans around the world. After Toffey posted three pictures of Tuna on the Instagram blog that night, the dog’s following grew from 8,500 to 15,000 within 30 minutes. Dasher pulled to refresh the page: 16,000. By the next morning, Tuna was at 32,000 followers. Dasher’s phone started ringing with media requests from around the world. Anderson Cooper’s talk show offered to fly her to DC; she appeared via webcast, thinking it wouldn’t be feasible to take a vacation day. But as requests for appearances continued to come in, her friends warned her about what was coming before she realized it: she would have to quit her job at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles and run her dog’s account full-time. It sounded ridiculous, so she took a month off to test the theory. Sure enough, BarkBox, which made a subscription box for pet items, was willing to sponsor Dasher and her friend on an eight-city tour with Tuna. People in various cities came up to her, crying, telling her they were struggling with depression or anxiety and that Tuna was bringing them joy. “That was the first time that I realized how much weight these posts had for people,” Dasher later recalled. “And that’s also when I realized I wanted to do this full-time.” Her life became about managing Tuna’s fame. Berkley, part of Penguin Random House, signed her up to write a book titled Tuna Melts My Heart: The Underdog with the Overbite. That led to more brand deals, plus merchandising to put Tuna’s likeness on stuffed animals and mugs. In her book’s acknowledgments, she thanks Tuna most of all, but also Toffey for sharing the post that changed her life. The tastes of one Instagram employee directly affected her financial success, but also the habits of the two million people who now follow that dog—including Ariana Grande.

He and Systrom had spoken extensively about using Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s “jobs to be done” theory of product development, which states that consumers “hire” a product to do a certain task, and that its builders should be thinking about that clear purpose when they build. Facebook was for text, news, and links, for example, and Instagram was for posting visual moments and following interests.

The ballroom collective House of Xtravaganza once summed up their position on the matter in a succinct Instagram post: “You can’t be homophobic/transphobic and use terms such as ‘yaaass’ or ‘giving me life’ or ‘werk’ or ‘throwing shade’ or ‘reading’ or ‘spilling tea.’ These phrases are direct products of drag and ball culture. You don’t get to dehumanize black and Latinx queer/trans people and then appropriate our shit.

And thanks to social media, we now have a new way to torment each other. Image crafting makes us look way more successful than we actually are. We curate the best parts of our lives, and hide everything else under the rug. So as we go out into the world, we see people, and from a distance, it looks like they are wildly successful, when in reality, they are slugging it out just like we are. But we don’t see reality. We see an Instagram post.

FOMO is one of the main reasons why people join other social media platforms. You’ll constantly be prompted to get on Instagram and that can happen with a few clicks once you’re on Facebook. You’ll be notified when your friends are there, and when they post their first story or photo. All that makes you feel like you’re left behind. So you join. You post. You then want more followers. Start using hashtags. Start receiving messages on yet another channel. And add that to your social media rituals that happen a few times daily, which makes the time spent in such activities even longer. So, less attention for anything else, such as spending time with family, learning things, being outside, having hobbies, reading, planning your future, or just enjoying the silence and relaxing.

What makes the social media effect even stronger and more personal, is that all our friends are there, and we feel like we’re missing out. Guess what? In any minute there are 347,222 tweets, 31.25 million messages are sent on Facebook, 48,611 photos posted on Instagram, and 300 hours of video uploaded on YouTube. (Source) These shocking numbers are what the active social media user has to live with daily, knowing how much he’s missing out. That’s insane, but it also leads to real conditions called information overload and the fear of missing out.

Just because she hated the holiday didn’t mean she didn’t want cute pictures to post on Instagram.

The post is also trending on Instagram and Facebook in ways that appear to be similarly manipulated. Within two or three days, this rumor will have been put in front of nearly every set of eyeballs in America.

In 2016, pop icon and actor Selena Gomez posted a photo on Instagram of herself in a dressing room watching The Big Bang Theory on her computer with the caption that read “The one thing that gets me going before anything… Sheldon Cooper—Big Bang Theory.” Molaro saw the post, which sparked an idea. Steve Molaro: After I had heard she liked the show, we approached Selena’s team a couple of times to have her on, but it never worked out due to scheduling reasons, etc. I’m a fan of hers and would have loved to have had her on. I never even got to pitch it to them, but I had kicked around an idea that Amy had been complaining about her awful stepsister and what a bitch she was. Which would be news because we didn’t even know she had one. This, of course, was before we established Amy’s dad and mom were still together. When we meet this stepsister, played by Selena, she’s beautiful and great and everyone loves her and Amy was just being jealous. It never got further than that. It would have been fun if it could have worked

Parker sighs, relaxing a little. “People are so excited you’re here, Logan. They want to see you. It’s good for the team. Good for the organization. Good for the town, who still claims you as its hero. The Harvest Hollow Happenings already has several posts with photos of you around town.” “The what?” “Just this gossipy Instagram account and—you know what? Never mind. The point is—this could be good for you too if you want to capitalize on it. A lot of the Appies have gotten pretty sweet gigs usually not offered to guys in the AHL.” (Page 66, Just Don't Fall)

Even the most insane day gives way to a sunset sooner or later. The sun moves to light up another side of the planet, and the sky, as if wishing to steal the show, offers a display of amazing colours. Dark lilac blended into magenta, into pale pink and faded into light blue with a spatter of fluffy white spots. Should you post such beauty on Instagram, you'll be accused of abusing filters. But tourists, undeterred, posed on the sandy line of Barcelona's famous beach and laughed, sharing the snapshots with each other. By and large, behaving like normal people, whose life was following its predictable and straightforward course.

People could look like anything. Any person with a phone managed their identity through a selection of photos whose appearances were impractical to debunk. One could reap the impression of a character if they pleased. People could post to appear like-minded, tough, the best, smart, creative, melancholy, and rich regardless of their actual state. A profile was a catalog of identity theft: books made one dreamy. Luxury made one wanted. Art made one complex. Travel made one busy. And minimalism made a person seem above it all. And the pursuit of this fraud only produced further unhappiness. Users’ contributions to the internet proceeded to tell the world that they were content and did not need love, while the very act of posting such a statement said that they were unhappy and indeed in need of love.

Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

In 2020, Instagram’s Well-Being team had run a study of massive scope, surveying 100,000 users in nine countries about negative social comparison on Instagram. The researchers then paired the answers with individualized data on how each user who took the survey had behaved on Instagram, including how and what they posted. They found that, for a sizable minority of users, especially those in Western countries, Instagram was a rough place. Ten percent reported that they “often or always” felt worse about themselves after using the platform, and a quarter believed Instagram made negative comparison worse.

For a story on Facebook’s failings in developing countries, Newley Purnell and Justin Scheck found a woman who had been trafficked from Kenya to Saudi Arabia, and they were looking into the role Facebook had played in recruiting hit men for Mexican drug lords. That story would reveal that Facebook had failed to effectively shut down the presence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel on Facebook and Instagram, allowing it to repeatedly post photos of extreme gore, including severed hands and beheadings. Looking into how the platform encouraged anger, Keach Hagey relied on documents showing that political parties in Poland had complained to Facebook that the changes it had made around engagement made them embrace more negative positions. The documents didn’t name the parties; she was trying to figure out which ones. Deepa Seetharaman was working to understand how Facebook’s vaunted AI managed to take down such a tiny percentage—a low single-digit percent, according to the documents Haugen had given me—of hate speech on the platform, including constant failures to identify first-person shooting videos and racist rants.