I think what really gets to me about Instagram is how it forces u to interact with the gaze that ppl see themselves thru — and legitimizes the need for that gaze to exist at all. Every post is enveloped in the sticky film of the poster’s internalized anxiety about the quality of their own performance of themselves. There is nothing good about a world where we have become so accustomed to watching us watch us that we’ve stopped differentiating between the people we are and the people we think we need to appear to be to trick the watcher in our heads into telling us we’re worthy
