Life should be more like Instagram

I also discovered the perfect coffee yesterday. I doubt anybody cares how good that coffee was. Unaware, I poured the right amount of hot water into the fabric filter and there with the right amount of ground coffee and the right amount of everything, I made a coffee that felt like no other before. 

If life would be more like Instagram, I would have taken a picture of this coffee and share it with the world. Based on the quality of the picture, on the angle used (for cup of coffee, I would use above and centered), whether people like the technical aspects of the picture or feel glad for the fact that I just had one awesome coffee... based on that, people would honor me with their "like." If an instagramer likes a picture, he or she takes the time to pay attention to it and hits the like button. If the picture failed to make any impression, the instagramer would simply scroll down to the next, more remote and preferably better, photo that they like. We're the good kind of snobs. Instagram works with a very innocent system of likes mostly. People can't be mean collectively with this system. Life has a lot of moments where people are mean collectively.

Life has a lot of words. People so often misuse words. Twitter, for example, is a lot of words, spat as frequently as you like. That, sometimes, could be a lot of ugly. I insist Twitter in Costa Rica is a whole different experience than in any country. Twitter serves as a diary of the everyday for many of us (us because I've fallen into the trap quite a few times and continue to do so). There we connect to a collective consciusness of the people we follow and the people that follow us back. If at least there's a group of active 30 users at the moment, whatever you write goes there and reaches 30 people instantly. Others may read that later and have a reaction, but these hypothetical group of 30 people got it first hand and may have a reaction that goes from approval, sympathy, admiration, repulsion, disapproval, or indifference (for providing a humble array of emotions,) and it is all happening in real time. The active user of twitter in Costa Rica, at least, engages in a virtual agora. In this pool or words, a lot it is said. That lot can make a lot of garbage and a lot of damage. "It's just twitter, is not the real world" we often excuse ourselves. "Words are wind". Words are beautiful and words have the greatest power, but we often misuse them. Life, just like Twitter, has a lot of people judging us on a word basis, and that's a really harsh world. I, in fact, tweeted that I just had the most amazing coffee. No one celebrated. It is not a something that deserves celebration, I'm aware, but that's what I was experienced at the moment. I have read two tweets after that, mocking the people that often tweet about their coffee. I'm not going to be paranoid and believe they tweeted against the people that tweet their coffee times because they wanted to make fun of me specifically, but how can I be sure it was not? One thing is for sure: that's a lot of contempt directed at someone or something. Whether it was part of my life or not, I came across it and I may feel it was personal. It could tarnish any good experience: any perception we imprint in others—which is a shade of the same problem. If someone has been actively reading the timeline one of those nights when I get drunk and tweet the most irrelevant, nonsensical stuff because I found it funny, they are entitled to think I am one jackass. I don't think anyone following me on instagram would feel something as strong as loathe for me. In the Twitter world, hating someone you don't even know in person is always a possibility. Haters have words, a great lot of them and they are yours and so easily to hate on. On instagram, a hater does not have a lot of material, or not as often. Haters won't be around instagram much when Facebook and Twitter generously satisfy their need for loathe. In real life, people can become haters easily. 

Whether we like it or not, the technological era is full of likes that elicit a certain reaction. If we share it, we are fishing for likes and for Facebook algorithms to keep our post on top of the feed. Likes are stimuli to our brain, and affect our emotions. I've noticed people at large are moved by likes. If someone's gets liked, they feel encouragement. If someone posts a certain content that no one minds, this person is very likely to drop posting the same content. The lack of likes discourages. If we have the idea we have an audience and we like it, we immediately start acting it out for that audience. Anyone denying that the amount of attention we get has a direct impact on what kind of content we decide to publish has not realized the psychological trap of the social media. Likes are not evil. It is alright to encourage people (and even celebrating their skill in something as hard as denouncing and as controversial as dark humor). A like is a little pat in the back. In instagram, if you don't get the like, you at least still have the picture. The like is not the reason, the picture is the reason, and the like is just someone agreeing on the image you captured. I believe so because people join instagram on first place because they like pictures. That much all instagramers should have in common. There, you snap and the image is yours-- the moment is yours. People on Instagram would be so busy appreciating artistic depiction of moments and creating theirs that would have less time to focus on negative feelings. In real life, people have an awful amount of time to dedicate to negativity. 

Maybe Instagram means obsession and social pressure for some people too (#toomanyhastagspeople) and Instagram could end up being just as sickening as any other social medium. This is not the instagram I know, though. The instagram I know allows me to connect to people through purely artistic manifestations. The instagram that I know only pushes you to make an effort to take a good picture or a better picture next time. The instagram I know tickles the everyday person with the curiosity for capturing a moment, a place, beauty (or ugliness so aesthetically perfect that it becomes a concept and therefore beauty) in an artistic way. I don't know. I am very fond of my instagramers, and that's more than I can say for a lot of people I know in "real life."