PSA: You don’t need a professional photo shoot for every occasion

I’ve been struggling for a while to find the right type of social media for my type of misanthropy. Facebook just seems like a big scam factory, X is full of blue-tick racists who really hate Meghan Markle, TikTok is for young people, and Bluesky seems OK for self-identified bleeding heart liberals but I think everyone there is probably sad at the moment. The only option then, for stalking people I worked with when I was 19, and watching videos of drunk people driving their golf carts into lakes, is Instagram. This is a shame because these days, Instagram is weird.

Remember in 2012 when Instagram was still a teeny tiny baby app and users earnestly took pictures of coffees and restaurant food on their phones and then just as earnestly put a filter on their “art” and shared it with their friends? Well, these days the whole platform has become oddly, depressingly, professionalised. The latte art has been replaced by sharply dressed dudes harping on about their midlife ADHD diagnoses to sell cryptocurrency and MAGA-adjacent life coaches with high production value videos trying to sign people up to “inspired” courses (I guess you learn how to be a bad person in an “inspired” way?).

The ones that I find most irritating are the family photographs. They are always the same.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

All of that is pretty gross. But the thing that bugs me the most is that the amateur shots of yore have gone. In their place are professional photoshoots of ordinary people. That’s right. The app that was designed so that regular folk could make mundane pictures slightly prettier is now just a bunch of glossy, stylised, actually ridiculous professional photographs of people who are not famous.

Remember, my Millennial friends, when getting a professional photograph taken was a special event? It would happen once, possibly twice, during the course of childhood. One second you and your siblings would be fused with the couch and watching your fifth straight episode of The Simpsons, and then suddenly you were deposited in front of some dark grey background, with alien-abduction lights blinding you and some guy calling you “girlie” and screaming at you to smile. The best of the resulting photographs would thereafter be the enduring record of your childhood – an image of you, gap-toothed and sugar-glazed – that would be framed and displayed not just at your house but also at both sets of grandparents’ homes, to remain there until you were surpassed in cuteness by the next generation.

With the concurrent rises of social media and smartphones, we adjusted to sharing layperson photographs with friends and family. But for a long time, there was an element of nervousness to the process – as though everyone was a little bit embarrassed. But now? Self-consciousness is dead.

Where once engagements were announced after the fact, now there is a slideshow posted almost immediately. They are always the same too. They begin with some dude on his knees while the recipient of his love affects surprise, despite the presence of a professional photographer. After that, there are a couple of tasteful kissing shots and then, finally a shot of a ring on a perfectly manicured hand.

Pregnancies and births are getting the same treatment too. The pregnancies of Instagram feature carousels of women in empire-cut dresses with bare feet and flowing hair, occasional shots of the father thrown in as an afterthought. And when the babies are born, they are introduced to the world having been airbrushed into something plumper and sweeter than any real baby could be; the alleged imperfections of both mother and child removed.

Just remember not to look at the cameras.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

The ones that I find most irritating are the family photographs. They are always the same. Everyone is wearing matching linen, or crisp white shirts, and the shots capture the family mid-motion, like they are part way through having a fun family outing where no child has cried, or taken their pants off, or just refused to move. The parents are always glowing with pride and the siblings are holding hands and laughing and not trying to spray each other in the face with a Febreze bottle that they found under the couch.

A generation from now, I’m predicting the rise of some niche media platform filled with these (now) adults, reminiscing about their childhoods being dominated by professional photographs and internet publication. And while I’m at it, I’m also predicting the imminent death of Instagram. Most people want something specific out of their social media. Maybe they want to transfer $20,000 into a Western Union account without asking any questions (Facebook), maybe they just want to hang with like-minded fascists (Truth Social), maybe they just want to check whether their high school boyfriend married someone prettier than them (if this exists, tell me).

But for what it’s worth, I think most people are looking for something that feels real, even if it isn’t, and professional social media shots just don’t cut it.

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