Betty Draper seeking advice from her therapist Dr. Arnold Wayne in Mad Men. Courtesy of HBO.
In our Unfollow column, we take a look at the rise of social media tropes and put a finger on why some of them haunt us, even after we close the app. Call us negative, but we’re positive that sometimes, the only thing you can do to keep sane in our age of overstimulation is mute, hide, and unfollow.
I’m taking a break from Insta-advice. That means I’m actively unfollowing and occasionally muting accounts that wax poetic and aesthetically pleasing lines, on how you should be living your life.
When I say Insta-advice, I know you all know what I mean. Each morning, you’ve probably scrolled past advice espousing wisdom on self-care, only to be met with how you should deal with toxic relationships in your Explorer feed. I am tired of being bombarded with these quotes in minimalistic calligraphy written by someone who perhaps knows how to write about life but has yet to live it.
Maybe this comes from seeing too many tweets that are common sense go viral, or maybe this comes from a privilege of having those around me put me in place when I need to be, instead of waiting to feel personally attacked by someone’s take online, but Insta-advice doesn’t work on me and I’m going to break down why.
If you’re anything like me, you might find that your twenties/early thirties is a time of turbulence. You can’t work out whether you should save or if you should ‘live your best life’. If you should be finding love, or whether you should be busting it open for every man, woman, toy, that comes your way. If you should be dabbling in your career or waiting for your thirties to build what you truly want. All while expecting to get to your 30th birthday unscathed by any decisions you may have made, and presuming, by the flick of the clock striking twelve, your life will be exactly how you planned it to be.
Yet, when I go online and see Insta-advice, all I see are contradictory statements that are as smug and sanctimonious as they are empty. Should I be ‘living my best life’ or be creating foundations—we can’t expect the tree to grow without planting the seed, after all? Are we letting go of friendships that have taken a turn or cancelling toxicity? Is it self-love or perseverance today? And the question as old as time: can you ever truly have it all?
All of these neatly presented mixed messages are anxiety-inducing. On one hand, I do believe we’re in control of what we take in, who we follow and who we omit from our digital bubble, but on the other, I think we underestimate how much we absorb through social media. My issue with Insta-advice is that it’s rarely taken with a pinch of salt, and advice, like most things, ebbs and flows to the beat of trends. But if it’s written abstractly and not by anyone who knows your situation intimately, Insta-advice is reduced to pretty words on a communal page.
Understandably, the intention behind Insta-advice is to help, and I’m sure Insta-gurus are a great reminder to some to keep on the right path, or to play heed to the advice of some vague proverb , but surely if we need algorithms to remind us on how to behave, respond and be, something else might be wrong?
Perhaps it’s old fashioned, but maybe we might just need to talk through our problems and personal situations with real humans. We might just need to figure it out by living through it and all the messiness that entails, instead of trying to double-tap our way out of an issue? Maybe the problem with Insta-advice is that it rarely stays on Instagram, yet we treat it like sacred guidance that wasn’t never even intended for us in the first place.
I think that’s what you call a mic-drop.
Anything you’re cutting out of your social media diet? Send your pitch to kathryn@sleekmag.com.