Instagram is trying to experiment to hide the number of likes our posts receive starting it out in seven countries namely, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zeland. And of course, my entitled ass has an opinion on it.
Instagram has gained immense popularity on the Internet and was one of the biggest social media platforms before, well, Tik Tok came along, why Tik Tok is beating Instagram, that’s not the point here. The point is, how did Instagram launch itself into this immense popularity, simple, it’s an Image-first app which means that you won’t be bored with words that are jumbled up to make sentences as on Twitter and Reddit. It reduces the cultural elitism and allows you to express without using clever puns as on Twitter and I don’t know exactly what happens on Reddit :P.
All you gotta do is take a picture and put it up on the app for your followers to see it and maybe, secretly you want them to appreciate it. This anticipation and eventual satisfaction of thirst of validation has made Instagram what it is today.
Celebrity culture has definitely taken a hike! Now, you don’t have to be Kareena Kapoor to be famous and be known by people, you can just be an entitled and elite pooh who is hungry for validation and aspires to be famous and popular. And this is where hiding of likes can be a bit of a problem to our validation obsessed generation.
Instagram at the end of the day is a social networking platform which virtually has created a working society. Every society (except a utopic/dystopic communist society depending on your politics) works on power segregation (at multiple levels). And on Instagram number of likes is the unit in which power is measured. If you take the very demonstration of power away from the society which is built on demonstrating superiority you’re kinda hitting the “kulhadi” on your very feet.
Instagram is a society which is found and based on the very idea of “inequality”. Likes being the currency and number of followers demonstrate power. And naturally, an unequal society will develop a cream layer of elites which will set trends and conversations using a trickle-down effect. These elites on Instagram are called influencers. These influencers are supported and provided with trends and conversations to keep the society alive by multiple brands. That’s basically how Instagram works, in my opinion.
A recent study showed that Instagram has millions of fake users who have manifested themselves in fake followers which means that a lot of influencers are not that influential :p. As far as the trends and conversations are concerned, if you remove the number of likes which means that you are not really showing the money you are making by the support of the brands then it’ll become really difficult to measure how well is the campaign initiated by a particular brand working. Which can be another big concern and may hit the very popularity of the app.
On the other hand, Instagram has had some really serious effects on the mental health of people. The very pressure of displaying your best (fake) self on social media has taken some serious toll on the users. Instagram like any other society is dysfunctional and hence has set some norms which if followed can help you gain popularity, thus satisfaction. This has created a very toxic wave which has swept millennials into an apocalyptic world of insecurity which dwells on attention deficiency.
Can hiding of the number of likes on posts and number of views on videos help in reducing the negative impact on mental health, maybe.
But can Instagram function the way it is functioning after the removal of likes and views, well communism has failed in the past and capitalism is striving as no other ideology has ever strived, so I am sceptical (as if it matters:p)
Blobiobolis 