Instagram has decided I’m a sad old sack. It’s only partly true

Fidgety while my husband drove us to the airport last Friday, I checked my email. A bald message from Instagram: my personal account had been locked due to “suspicious activity”. Here’s a recovery link.

Turned out the only thing vaguely suss was I’d changed a security setting the day before. That was enough to have Meta on full alert. Thanks, I guess. But since then, no amount of link-clicking or troubleshooting-page scouring has unlocked what’s been mine since 2012.

How much longer could I spend dodging posts about gut-health gummies and Trinny Woodall’s eyeshadow? Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Thirteen years of life moments – kids in everything from face paint to graduation gowns, the first photo ever taken of me and Chris together (off our gourds in a Canberra pub), ex-husbands, ex-haircuts – made inaccessible by the cold efficiency of Mark Zuckerberg’s customer service department.

My first instinct was panic. My resting heart rate shot to 87. Then: admin mode. I filled out forms that vanished into the Meta abyss, sent pleading emails to nobody. Paid $80 to the local IT experts to work some magic.

Even paid for the blue tick verification that makes you look up yourself, just because my mate Scotty said it would get me access to actual humans.

It did. Kind of. I sat through endless loops with support staff who seemed to think I was trying to hack my own account. I uploaded my ID. Reset my passwords – four times. Followed up daily. Nothing. Turns out paying Insta for support is like paying a cat to fetch your slippers.

I felt unmoored. Shattered. The account was a decade-plus archive of proof I’d been a hands-on mum at athletics carnivals. That I’d hiked the Three Capes Track with a 14 kilo backpack and not nearly enough chocolate. That I once had a dog in an I Dream of Jeannie costume.

Like your own social media account, the photos were a personal history. Charted moves, milestones, breakdowns, bad lighting, the Jet Get Born reunion concert, roadies with the hilarious Rat Chat rat pack. Important, right?

But. Almost a week in – after the rage, the bargaining, the bargaining again – I started to suddenly feel ... ace. Yeah, plot twist alert.

For the last year or so, my Insta experience had mostly been dodging ads for gut-health gummies, menopause shapewear and Trinny Woodall’s eyeshadow.

I rarely saw posts from anyone I actually knew anymore, just random midlife women in kicky berets telling everyone they were enough, bella. Christ’s sake.

Somewhere, somehow, my algorithm had become convinced I was a sad old sack lacking confidence, bladder control and any clue how to dress. Only partly true.

Suddenly, that was over. No more fighting my way through capsule wardrobe suggestions featuring the same stupid trench coat and hard-working jean. No more captions like “this is the face of a woman who just rediscovered inner peace.” Well, congrats lady – and see ya never.

I started asking the question that should’ve come first: what was I actually trying to recover? A life that had already moved on?

So. I’m starting fresh. Or fresh-ish. I’ve commandeered my old unloved business account (badmothermedia) and plan to jazz up my feed to reflect life now. Not too serious, a bit silly. Sexy silly.

Expect to see my deadlift PB and my husband holding me in front of him – very much a Dr Smith and Will Robinson dynamic – while an elephant squirts me in the face. There will be pashing in pools, the return of the whoopee cushion costume and 5 billion dog photos.

The best part? No legacy to uphold. Just whatever midlife weirdness I feel like sharing. If you want in, fabulous. Look up the newly named badmotherkate on Insta. I’ll follow you back if you promise no affirmations.

What I won’t do? Pretend I’m totally zen about Meta failing to unlock their own lock. And the weird thing is the old account still exists, I just can’t log into it. Or delete it, in ceremonial fashion.

But those memories live elsewhere – in my head, in printed photos shoved in drawers, in the people who lived them with me.

The kids remember the holidays. I still have the hiking boots. I’m ready for new trails.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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