Instagram, you've just gone ick.
Loved you but I'm leaving you friend, your new change in service is just not up my alley.
I'm not taking part in Ai- honestly it gives me the creeps and makes me mad. We struggle to employ and give purpose to humanity as is, why in God's name are we interested in giving jobs to things which don't have families to feed, relationships to foster or spirits to nurture??
I admit, my desire to share my life and loves all came to a grinding halt with the birth of Adira, but things had been festering towards that build up. My latest experience on social media had left me feeling much like my short stint on Facebook a few years ago. I didn't like the negative backlash; the jealousy, the envy and the 'measuring up' of what we have or have not. The hours whittled away geezing at Kim K's ass or Kylie Jenner's latest makeup was fun I admit, especially when I'd succumbed to morning sickness; but really it's all brain fluff and it just fills my noggin with ideas that block my own creativity.
Friends started calling less, and even those closest to me took posts as enough of a catch up. But most of all, I've gotta say, I don't like other people having any 'ownership' or 'share-ship' over my identity, snapshots or creative output. Am I a control freak or am I just careful?
I don't like the big picture further down the line with either Ai, social media or where our privacy laws are going, and I'm definitely not going to take a gamble on my predictions with my daughter.
I remember many posts ago making a comment similar to this "if we can acertain what someone likes and loves, we can in turn figure out what they hate, and with this information we can manipulate and control others". We are quietly and naively giving people authority to control our thoughts, our feeling and through this our actions. We are feeding psycological/ spiritual warfare; locally, governmentally, globally. Those innocent 'likes' have sinister ramifications.
Yes spiritual- these seemingly innocuous apps are quietly crucifying us. They breed negativity and divert us from finding our own purpose. We're getting sucked into immaterial and superficial untruths and we're increasingly complacent about these changes and compliant to them once they are revealed. Ulterior motives seem more prevalent than ever and sinister motivations by governments and mega corporations are infiltrating our communities. I don't like being tracked and recognised wherever I go, I abhor the demise in real communication; I don't want to be a part of environments where this is normalised. New Zealand's developments are immensely concerning; Research the GCSB and what liberties they can take upon you... research Project Speargun in Auckland...
'What We Worship', Digital collage from Instagram, 2492 x 2566mm, 2015-18
So, there's more than enough info for people to see or get lost in about me here on my website. I've never found any increase in my sales as an artist by having Insta- although any man and his hairy dog would like to tell you otherwise, and I had a fantastic feed. In my experience, again the nasty outweighed the beneficial, and I feel relieved to have cut ties. It won't be long until like Facebook you will not be able to delete your account, I'm happy I got in when I did and removed my data. All props to you if you've got 40K followers and you're making cachinga off them- it's not my life path, it doesn't make me buzz.
Technology inevitably becomes obsolete; people don't. I got tired of continually feeding Insta- at some point you're going to get over it aren't you, it's a fad. It's awful having people get nasty about skill, talents and passions I've taken years to develop and master, but that's half the problem with these things- there's no history or continuity given, and for me, once I put my account onto private to combat this negativity, the whole point of it is useless- it's no longer a collection available for people around the world to be inspired by.
“Facebook is so ubiquitous it’s sometimes easy to forget that it’s reach spans much further than your likes, comments, and groups on its main platform.
Reminder: the tech giant owns Instagram and WhatsApp, too. And if you’re a person that maybe doesn’t like a company knowing every single thing about you, then, surprise! That’s going to keep biting you in the ass for a while.
At Facebook’s F8 developer’s conference, CTO Mike Schroepfer cheerfully revealedthat the goliath media company has been scanning billions of photos posted to Instagram. The purpose: to teach artificial intelligence to identify “offensive content, spam, hate speech, fake accounts, fake news, clickbait, and more,” automating a bit of what human content moderators already do.
... Under Facebook’s ownership, Instagram’s publicly-available data could be used for pretty much anything. Instagram’s terms of service stipulates that while the service “does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service,” it does reserve full “royalty-free, transferable, […] worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service” — that’s pretty damn broad, and gives them a lot of leeway to do pretty much whatever they want with your photos, at least internally.”
That shit is just scary.
Insta, ya made me feel like when I stoped smoking cigarettes. I loved smoking, still very occasionally do, but back then I remember the price had just got hiked to over $20NZD a pack of 20's, all the gorgeous gold embossed packaging had been subjected to government standards with heinous photos of lungs with cancerous tumors and photos of smokers teeth, and I woke up one day and I was just over having to always find a lighter. I was leaving the house and I couldn't find my fags and paraphernalia. That was it, I'd faded out. It had gone from being a sexy subversive pastime to being a chore.
Instagram was similar- it's so nice to be back to being in the moment. Making gorgeous food and taking a breath to be thankful rather than setting up the plates to photoshoot. Watching the sunset with my buba in arms rather than running around trying to find my partner's phone with the better camera. Watching a gig rather than watching it through a lens. Visualising and caring about what I like, rather than being intrigued by who 'liked'.
That's the fascinating thing about the human condition to be intent; to be purposeful; to be dedicated; to be passionate; to be addicted; we can choose, we can redirect our choices and through this grow in the manners we so decide.
Growth for these new generations means working through an increasing amount of lies, untruths, misguided information and people making a buck. It is no longer about finding information as such, my daughter's generation is going to need highly refined skills about how to filter and block out things they don't want impacting upon their psyche, waylaying them academically or potentially hurting them- either by others or more sadly through themselves and their esteem, identities and spirits. They will need to be intently selective about where they want to go and what they need to get there.