„Instagram influencers are the worst thing that ever happened!“, I exclaimed self-righteously and pretentiously while scrolling down my Instagram feed.
„Dude, why don’t you chill a bit?“, retorted my sister, without even raising her head from the drawing she was working on. „What is wrong with Instagram influencers, anyway?“
„My God, their statuses are so cheesy and shallow! I can’t believe thousands of people follow them and take that crap seriously!“
„Sorry, Mr. I-read-only-constructive-things. I am sure it is not all so bad as you depict it. Besides, there are many cheesy and shallow things in the world. Why do you care so much?“
„I-I-I-I don’t know. It just makes me so angry when I see these posers posting heavily filtered photos with quasi-deep quotes about the meaning of life they probably picked up from the nearest copy of that horrible book The Secret!“
„Well, you know how they say. When you hate something about a certain person, it usually has very little to do with them.
And everything to do with you…“
Ever since I made my Instagram account, I have been annoyed with a certain group of people using it primarily as a business tool.
Instagram influencers.
As almost any „quasi-intellectual“, I couldn’t stand the thought that anyone is able to make a decent living out of posting photos of themselves (or with certain products) and writing captions below those photos.
I always justified it that such a lifestyle is shallow and that writing trite advice below photos is easy and intellectually lazy. For someone who spent a good portion of his life in a conviction that he is better than the majority of people, 1 adopting the ‘houlier than thou’ attitude came very easy and natural.
Of course, this intellectual elitism was completely unjust. My depiction of influencers as lazy millennials who spend their days at the beach and take a selfie every now and then couldn’t be further from the truth.
It failed to acknowledge that being an Instagram influencer involves a huge amount of planning, researching, marketing, personal branding and – let’s not forget – taking time and money to make professional, high-quality photos. Even the ‘cheesy’ captions and descriptions are not necessarily always so ‘cheesy’ and contain a healthy dose of wit, sarcasm or sensible life advice.
Besides, who has time to read scientific studies and Anna fucking Karenina all the time, anyway.
However, even if my perception of an Instagram influencer was distorted, it still doesn’t explain why I got so fired up when talking about them.
After all, there are many things in this world that can be regarded as trite and shallow. But most of them leave me indifferent and don’t provoke a nearly as intensive reaction as people posting images with #instagood or #beautifulCroatia hashtags below.
So I wondered – what exactly makes me hate Instagram influencers so much?
Common explanations about intellectualism, purity of online content and superficiality didn’t seem quite convincing. As much as I tried to rationalize it and avoid it, the reason for my anger was much more obvious and much more simple than abstract concepts.
One of the good old seven deadly sins.
The good old envy.
In the last couple of years, I have spent some percentage of time jealous of other people.
In the majority of cases, it would usually have something to do with someone having something/achieving something I very much wanted to have/achieve but was unable to.
The most notable example is my chess career. I spent the last four years as a very active chess blogger, dreaming of making it in chess circles and making a living solely out of the game I love.
For quite a long time these aspirations didn’t really go anywhere. So during that period, I was extremely envious of any chess streamer, player, or Youtuber who was able to achieve that goal „instead“ of me.
„They don’t deserve it!“
„That should have been me!“
„Oh, that content is so bad!“
As I was thinking these thoughts, I realized that the afore-mentioned notion is very much true.
The feeling of hate has everything to do with the person hating rather than the object of hate.
However, in the case of Instagram Influencers, the reason for my hate wasn’t immediately clear.
Sure, they made a relatively decent living by traveling the world and doing what they love. They were also self-employed and independent – an ideal of mine at a time. In contrast to movie stars and other celebrities, they were apparently ordinary people who quickly rose to fame.
Even so – I was never really aiming to be an influencer. I still saw no reason to be so triggered by them in comparison to some other professions. So I decided to dig a bit deeper and determine what is it that most of them have that is apparently unattainable to me.
And then it dawned on me.
No matter if they are male or female, white or black, fitness, fashion, travel, foodie or lifestyle influencers, all of them have one thing in common!
They are all extremely good-looking people!
From my earliest days, I have been dealing with insecurities related to my looks.
I have never been particularly attractive. In my youth years, my hair was always shitty. I dressed up like an average tax attorney.. or in those horrible short-sleeved shirts. I was the kid with glassess. I also had relatively sever acne issues throughout my teenage years.
The reactions of people around me also served as a regular reminder that, in terms of look, I don’t stand out. I was never mentioned as one of the hot guys in class. I never figured highly on the eternally popular „Who would you kiss out of all boys in the class?“ lists. I never got picked to do a challenge in one of the numerous „The bottle of truth“ spinning sessions.
At the age when being the object of girl’s fantasies is the only purpose in life, the fact that I never belonged to that chosen group had a profound effect on my self-image and confidence.
These insecurities particularly manifested themselves when it came to posing for photographs.
First of all, I don’t consider myself as particularly photogenic. I always hated how artificial and bad I turned out on any sort of photo. I always dreaded the yearly photoshoot where we would make serious, funny and ‘crazy’ the entire class – in my case, it would become awkward, awkwarder and awkwardest.
(That awkward pose and unnatural smile are the most obvious manifestation of my nervous state of mind during those class photo sessions)
Secondly, my perception of my looks made me overexaggerate the effects of me appearing on a photo. As long as my looks weren’t documented, I could pretend they are only temporary or that other people don’t notice them at all.
Having them on a photo was something completely different. Now my shitty hair and horrible acne were captured forever.
And laid bare in front of the whole world to see them…
When Instagram first appeared, it is no wonder I was not thrilled. Even though I was way past my school days, the ghost of the past was still haunting me. A platform where the sole point is posting nice photos (of yourself) clashed with my deepest insecurity – the inability to post a photo of myself and be completely content and peaceful about it.
Even though I managed to cope with these insecurities much better over the years, 2 I was unable to make them completely go away. It took me a long time to make an Instagram profile. And even when I decided to do it, I only created a „business“ account for my chess blog – the thought of exposing my private persona and images to the wide audience on a platform created for specifically that purpose was still unbearable.
With all that in mind, it is not surprising I started hating Instagram influencers from the moment I came into contact with them.
They had something I wanted to have so desperately – the ability to post pictures in which they look magnificent seemingly without any effort.
Good looks, high level of attractiveness and hoards of „simps“ in the comment sections telling them how astounding they are.
Never mind all the negative connotations of exposing yourself online.
Never mind all the ugly comments in the comment section.
Never mind that I didn’t know anything about them beyond that photo.
All I wanted was to have what they have at that moment. I imagined myself in their position, while simultaneously being perfectly aware it is something unattainable for me.
Therefore, whenever I scrolled through my Instagram feed and stumbled on one of those perfect photos, my envy would be immediately triggered.
And feelings of resentment and hate would kick in…
Now, you might be wondering what on Earth does Tinder have to do with anything.
Well, in the context of my needs and insecurities, having a Tinder account is not that much different from creating an Instagram account.
Here is a platform specifically aimed at you posting your photos online and other people judging you on the basis of these photos.
In fact, Tinder is more personal in its feedback. The fact that we are talking about intimate relationships and that people are able to reflect on your photos in terms of binaries (match/no match) is much more direct and „brutal“ than Instagram where you send your photos „in the open“, to the hundreds/thousands of people. Indirectly.
Tinder is a more vivid reminder of my level of (un)attractiveness. It is well known that Tinder is a subject to the very extreme, modified, 95-5 version of the Pareto Principle – 5% of attractive people get 95% of the likes/matches.
Every match I don’t get, every swiping session without any particular feedback serves as a cruel reminder that you are, in fact, not among that 5% of chosen ones – in a much more radical fashion than the absence of likes on Instagram ever does.
And in a very similar manner as the absence of my name in the girl-chatter on high-school corridors some 10 years ago did..
Now, before I depart, I should mention that the situation is now as pessimistic and bleak as I presented it.
Even though I still get triggered by Instagram influencers and have a good dose of insecurity related to my physical looks, I might have painted a somewhat biased picture throughout this article that doesn’t 100% correspond to the truth.
First of all, even though I still don’t consider myself particularly attractive, that doesn’t mean I consider myself unattractive. I am fortunate enough that I don’t suffer from any major deformations/hindrances that would immediately repulse the people around me.
I consider myself to be an average looking guy. In the immortal words of Jim Jefferies – „I have some hair. It is shit hair. Five!“:
(I am sorry – I just now realized the original clip has been removed from Youtube. Damn! You can find the entire transcript of the show here, though!)
It also has to be mentioned that looks are directly correlated to the amount of effort you put into maintaining them. Fortunately for us, men, little things (like exercising regularly or wearing contact lenses instead of glasses) can already make a big difference.
This has been something I have neglected until recently. Since I have always been insecure about my looks, I always opted for choosing ‘an easy way’ out and neglecting them completely under the excuse I don’t have time to deal with it because I have another intellectual stimulation to seek or hobby to attend to. A classic example of trying to run away from the problem instead of taking measures to deal with it.
I never put particular effort to look or dress nicely. I always subscribed to the „looks don’t matter“ ideology and used it as an excuse not to do anything about the part of my life that has been apparently bothering me a lot. Taking this ‘moral high ground’ and being righteous in a way ultimately didn’t achieve anything and made me even more resentful of the entire situation.
Also, for us men, physical appearance is correlated with the level of confidence to an extent. Many people have told me my main problem throughout the years is not the appearance per se, but my attitude toward it. When you reek of insecurity 5 miles away, no amount of good looks can compensate for it.
Once I raised my level of self-awareness and started paying more attention to my appearance, my level of confidence rose to an extent and I don’t feel nearly as unattractive as I did back in my school days. This shift is much more radical than the actual change in my appearance over the years.
Last but not least, I am fortunate enough to be a white male in an environment where white males are not judged at all on the basis of their looks.
I can appear at my working place with the shittiest hair of all time in a semi-ironed t-shirt showing clear remnants of my recent dinner and the worst thing I might get are some weird looks. I will not be judged, people will not assume things about my character on the basis of it, I will not be asked to leave and never return and my boss will never try to hit on me on the basis of my outfit or because of my level of attractiveness.
I will never get ridiculed or shamed on the basis of my appearance – something many people – women, in particular – can’t say about their everyday interactions.
Therefore, in the grand scheme of things, you could argue that my insecurities are benign and spoilt, to an extent.
But they are still mine. As trivial as they are, there are still demons I have to deal with. It is just good to keep them in line, put them into perspective and never forget about things that really matter.
That still doesn’t mean I can’t with that I could wake up one day, take a photo of myself and say to myself: „Oh well, that one turned out rather nice!“, while smiling with full confidence.
Or at the very least, get a girl whose profile I really liked to swipe right after seeing it!
- A trait that manifests itself ever so often even today
- As will elaborated toward the end of the article
