Instanomics: Where Our Treasure Is, There Our Posts Will Be Also

It started with sourdough. 

If you were on Instagram in 2020, you remember the phenomenon. And even if you weren’t on Instagram, you probably heard about it via YouTube, morning talk shows, or the news. Americans were in need during lockdown. Both body and soul hungered. We scoured bare grocery shelves and bountiful blogs for some form of sustenance. On the blogs, we found a way to fill both our needs for food and purpose: We would learn to make sourdough bread.

Sourdough provided us with a hobby, one that took thought but was relatively easy. It made us feel more self-sufficient in a time of confusion, helplessness, and yeast shortage. It provided the comfort of carbs. Best of all, it was an affordable endeavor that didn’t require fancy kitchen equipment.

With enough practice and the right tutorials, sourdough could be beautiful. In March and April of 2020, my Instagram feed was an endless sourdough scroll. Some were simple, others carefully sprinkled with herbs. A few artsy friends did full photoshoots of their loaves, the lighting and background as lovingly arranged as a wedding portrait. But the variety of photos eventually got boring. It was still just bread.

By summer, my Instagram feed had moved on to more complicated recipes, bringing some welcome diversity to the posts and stories. As my friends’ culinary interests widened, though, I began to see a division.

There had been solidarity in the sourdough movement. Photos of bread could speak to your culinary or photography skills without revealing your current financial status. Now, however, delving into some recipes required rare ingredients and specialized equipment. The dishes and drinks these items yielded were gorgeous. (At least, the right Instagram filters made them gorgeous.) But my mouth stopped watering after I looked up how much the recommended white truffle sauce cost.

The worst posts included the equipment hatchling chefs were buying to fuel their hobby (or, depending on how seriously they were taking themselves, “craft”). I understand wanting to recommend items and brands to friends, but all recommendations come with a price tag, spoken or unspoken. Posts of kitchen tools revealed that the poster was in a financial position to buy what they were advertising. The worst ones included captions with phrases like “My new kitchen must-have!” or “If you aren’t using the KitchenAid pasta roller, you’re doing it wrong.” The captions would have been off-putting at any time, like GQ’s “10 Essentials” videos in which wealthy celebrities show ten items they “can’t live without.” The 2020 economic situation, however, made the posts all the more obnoxious. While some of my friends (and I) were fortunate enough to keep working from home, plenty of others were on unpaid leave or losing their jobs entirely.

As 2020 continued, the people I followed on Instagram moved on to other interests, but the trend of posting possessions (especially new ones) continued. Alone and barred from activities that normally filled our lives and posts, those with enough disposable income filled their friends’ screens with what they were buying. Instagram became a showcase of have and have not.

About a year before the pandemic struck, I went out to eat with a friend and her partner. The restaurant was hip and more expensive than our usual cheap Mexican place. Our food was plated beautifully and our drinks’ intricate foam art almost justified their price. We took photos of everything before eating.

“You know, if we posted those pictures, people would think this is how we spend every weekend,” my friend observed with a laugh. “Like we could afford this kind of thing whenever we wanted!”

I nodded. It’s certainly what I assumed when I saw friends’ photos at this kind of place unless there was a caption explicitly stating that it was a special night. Social media is a way of sharing what our lives are like, after all. Whatever we share must reflect that, right? Somehow half the people on my timeline could afford to go out every weekend, no matter what job they held.

“The key is to post the pictures slowly over time,” said her partner, a recent college grad who was more up to date with social media trends. “No matter what you’re doing right now, you can always post a photo of you doing something more interesting.”

I thought of my college students who had taught me about FOMO. I had assumed the root of fear was about not being invited to hang out with the cool kids. But what if those students simply couldn’t afford to live like the cool kids (or at least how the cool kids pretended to live)?

I noticed how my students divided themselves into friend groups outside of class. Those who had buildings named after their grandparents found each other at fundraising events while those struggling to pay their tuition met while working two jobs, often cleaning event spaces after those other classmates had gone back to the dorms. Instagram surely amplified the already obvious economic division. As with the things we buy, how we spend our time also comes with a price tag. Social media gives us a chance to share that price with the world.

My friend sighed. “I don’t want people asking us to go out like this all the time. And who wants to spend every weekend doing that? I mean, it’s fun, but I want to spend a whole day reading a book. I want to play with the dogs and hang with my family. But I guess that isn’t what people want to show off.”

“Showing off” is one way to think about how we use Instagram. That’s certainly the way to classify celebrity posts that receive backlash, like Kylie Jenner’s photos of her luxury car collection. Another way to think about it is how Instagram functions: advertising.

Over the last several years, the idea of building a brand has expanded from the world of retail to the personal. Like commercial advertising, personal branding is about hitting a target audience. Often, personal branding on social media means choosing a trope. Yes, you may want to seem unique, but you also want to be identified as part of a crowd. Instagram would curate different ads for the various cafeteria tables in Mean Girls based on their aesthetics and interests. Likewise, if you want a certain kind of person (e.g., rich, athletic, smart) to slow their scroll when they come across your post, you need to include something that will attract that group. If you want the world to know that you’re a serious musician, you’ll post photos of your instruments or concerts. This advertising isn’t necessarily “false.” You may, in fact, be a talented and dedicated musician. Still, the advertising is curated, whether the curation is conscious or not.

Most of us are conscious of the curation to some extent. It’s why we ask our friend to take a photo of us in some situations but not others. What we might be less conscious of is how this curation shows our financial status, or at least what we want others to think of our finances. Remember, all posts come with an implied price tag. Just because we aren’t posting photos of a Rolls-Royce or a lavish vacation on a personal island doesn’t mean we aren’t flaunting our wealth. A close-up of an engagement ring or a picture at an exclusive event are still signs of what we can afford. And even if we can’t afford expensive items, we can still mimic our culture’s current signals of wealth. Simply rearranging our rooms so our photos have a minimalist aesthetic can be a way of trying to make it look like we have nice things.

The problem is that we often betray how much we can (or want to) buy, no matter our motives. We may have no intention of appearing to be what others might consider “rich,” but that doesn’t mean we aren’t communicating a financial status that will inspire envy, sorrow, or shame in our neighbor.

I’m not anti-Instagram. I have an account and usually enjoy seeing friends’ posts because I have learned not to engage with those who are the most shameless about showing off their money. Still, sometimes it seems like the best way to deal with social media’s potential vices is to abandon it altogether. I’m sure that’s true for many (if not the majority of) Instagram users. Leaving social media isn’t the only way to curb our online materialism and consumerism, though. I believe there are a few ways we can check our photos’ price tags.

One basic way to think through how our posts may make others feel is to consider our audience. When millions of people were losing their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic, posting our recent purchases or pricey experiences was unkind. We’re in a similar situation now as we enter a global recession. If your financial situation doesn’t change, keep in mind that you’re in the minority. Even when the economy is fairly stable, remember that not all of your followers can afford your lifestyle, however modest your life may seem to you. Instagram stories have a customizable “close friends” option, so if you really want to share that you’ve bought a home or taken an expensive vacation, that feature is a great way to ensure that your post doesn’t come across as a boast to your friends who are struggling to make rent.

While I’m a proponent of posting fewer pictures in general of things we buy, we can post about our possessions responsibly. It’s always good to resist the capitalist trend of separating products from their makers. This doesn’t mean you should advertise a blender’s brand. Rather, if you want to show pictures of what you buy, show what you buy locally. By shifting the focus from what you are able to purchase to the farmer, artist, or craftsperson behind the purchase, you can support local business and show that a thing’s value isn’t based on price or exclusivity. I especially suggest doing this for artists who haven’t built a big brand on social media. The post can then even be an act of hospitality.

One difficult Instagram practice is giving up false advertising. Judging whether a post is dishonest can be tricky and may even trigger an existential crisis. “Authenticity” is a fraught concept, but judging whether our post is authentic regarding our finances is easier to tackle than the notion of authenticity altogether. If we post a photo of ourselves at an elegant restaurant, does our caption make it sound like we spend all our weekends this way when the dinner was actually a birthday celebration? How much are we staging a supposedly simple photo, and does that staging make our space look more like a Kinfolk spread than our actual apartment? To keep ourselves honest, it might be worth occasionally posting a decidedly unglamorous photo, perhaps even without a tongue-in-cheek caption that advertises it as a joke rather than reality.

If we’re going to interact with the world with integrity and care, we must act intentionally. A key to keeping our Instagram posts from encouraging any number of vices is to ask ourselves a seemingly simple yet profound question: “Why am I posting this?”

What we choose to share on Instagram shows the world what we value. That might seem obvious enough, but it’s a layered concept. Consider the sourdough photos. Ostensibly, people shared them to show that they were enjoying learning a new skill and valued being able to make their own bread. Yet the actual photos could reveal other values as well.

A photo of the bread next to the starter bacteria might reveal that the poster valued the scientific process of making bread. A picture of a half-eaten loaf might reveal that the maker valued the bread as food. Photos that looked like portraits might reveal that the poster valued the art of photography. In all these cases, such displays of values are an advertisement of who we are. Moreover, they’re an advertisement of how we want others to perceive us.

Take the dedicated musician and the way they choose to post. “Does this photo show how important music is to me?” can easily morph into “Does this photo say I’m the kind of person who knows a lot about music?” It may seem like a small difference, but conflating our values with others’ perception of us is dangerous, especially when many of the ways we advertise ourselves on Instagram have to do with materials and our consumption habits.

I recently discovered how guilty I am of this kind of thinking. My Instagram account doesn’t betray a wealthy lifestyle or cool brand, and for that reason I usually don’t share it. When asked for my social media links when I first wrote for Christ and Pop Culture, I skipped Instagram. Looking at my profile, I felt embarrassed for appearing so basic. I’m not a good photographer, so I have no pictures of vistas to give off the artsy vibe I desire. My profile includes pictures of friends, my dogs, family, my dogs, poems, and my dogs. Nothing about my Instagram says, “Look at this interesting writer. I bet she watches indie films and has an impressive bourbon palate.” But that’s what I want my followers to think about me. God forbid that I come across as another boring woman who loves her people and her pets.

I claim to value the people and pets in my photos more than material items and what I consume. Yet I cringed at a page displaying what I supposedly love most. I wanted photos of typewriters, arthouse theaters, and Manhattans. None of these are bad things to photograph. None are bad to share on Instagram. Still, they are all things that would reveal what I value by showing how I spend my money. But they’re susceptible to moth and rust. The ones I love are not. If I must keep my brand basic and my sourdough simple to remind myself of that truth, then so be it.

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