What? No way. Instagram might hide the number of likes
a post has.
So what Instagram is considering, is making it so that for me as a viewer on
my feed, I won't be able to see any of the number of likes on any of the posts
I'm looking at as I'm scrolling through. But I will still be able to see how many
likes my photos get, but no one else will see how many likes my photos get. I think
the like button, in my opinion, is the most influential invention of the last
decade. I did some research on it and the like button was actually invented just
as a way to reduce redundancy on the Internet. So for example, if someone
posted that they're engaged, you're gonna get tons of comments that just say
"congratulations!" over and over and over. And then if someone comments maybe a
little more and leaves more of a note it gets kind of buried by all of those
"congratulations" comments. So the like button was originally invented just to
kind of allow that quick easy congratulations rather than having to
type out congratulations and have it be redundant. I think we all know it
turned into a lot more than that.
We're now at the point where we get personal validation based off of like
numbers and we use it to compare how valuable we are to other people, or how
good our artwork is to other people, it's just...it's a it's a sickness now! It's
a disease! It's ironic because it was invented originally to reduce redundancy
in comments but in my opinion, all it's done is created redundancy in creativity.
If I say something has the "Instagram aesthetic" you probably know
exactly what I'm talking about.
In other words, you see so much regurgitation on
Instagram and you see people, myself included, just mimicking posts that get a
lot of likes and you kind of figure out what's gonna get a lot of likes on
Instagram and then you stop sharing what's valuable and what's creative and
what you're proud of, and you just kind of share what you think will get a lot
of likes. So what if we removed the number of likes? Would you think
differently about what you post? Would you post more often? I think for me
personally I'd be more creative. I think I'd be less afraid to post things.
Instagram stories were one of the most refreshing things for me, for my
creativity because I felt liberated to just create whatever I want and put less
pressure on it.
It was something that didn't have likes attached to it, it didn't have comments
attached to it, it didn't have metrics attached to it. It was just something
that was fun, it got shown to my friends, and then it
expired in 24 hours. So honestly that's one of the things that I think I got the
most practice in videography with is Instagram stories because I wasn't
worried about the validation or the likes or any of that nonsense.
So I wonder what would happen if that same sort of atmosphere is built into normal
Instagram posts? It would completely remove this idea that certain things are
better than others because they have a higher quantity of likes or not.
You could just go through your feed and you decide what you like and what you don't
like, and no one else's opinion matters. That sounds like a good experience to me.
What if we didn't live in this world where everyone was trying to get more
followers and trying to get instafamous and trying to get higher numbers? What if
you were just deeply proud of the photo you posted? What if no one knew how many
people liked it? Don't you think you'd be a little more interested in expressing
yourself and being creative and sharing things that mattered if there was no
quantifiable metric attached to it that was publicly visible? So at the end of
the day, I hope something like this happens. I'm seriously in favor of removing
the like quantity. Let me know if you're stoked about the possibility of it being
removed or maybe if there's a reason that you like having the number of likes
displayed? Yeah I'd really love to hear your thoughts. Alright so with all of that
said, thanks so much for watching! If you liked this video be sure to click that
thumbs up button so that I can have a numerical quantity attached to how good
my artwork is! Oh my gosh, totally kidding obviously. But I really do genuinely
appreciate you watching and I appreciate you being here and I'd love to read any
comments or ideas that you have about removing the light quantity from the
internet. Thanks for being here, thanks for watching I'll see you next time!