Why I Quit Instagram as an Artist (and some other platforms I use)

Hi, back with an

other

video, so before we start, I wanted to thank Evie, who I'm drawing this wonderful piece of art for, for supporting me on Patreon. It's Patreon Appreciation Month, this month for me, January, drawing, whatever. I want you to support me on Patreon so that every January you receive a work of art. It's usually mailed, but mail has been weird, so it's going to be digital and here I am drawing it on my iPad. Thanks Evie, so today's topic is why I left. Instagram no more Instagram for me in 2021 possibly and hopefully beyond it's ridiculous so I made a video a couple of years ago called Why I Like Instagram and you might remember that video when I first posted it and explained the reasons why I really liked it and I think those are still valid reasons.

I just don't think they are valid reasons for me anymore. Now Instagram has become too much. I think there was a beauty and simplicity to just posting your art there. a point, but it became really overwhelming and very demanding because people learn that they can make money from it and so did Instagram, so any

other

post is like shopping and buying things, and you know, for an

artist

get the greatest range. Either they already have to be a great

artist

or they have to try really hard and pay attention to Instagram almost exclusively to even get their art scene, especially if you go from scratch and start another Instagram or

some

thing. mileage may vary if you like Instagram I'm not going to know how to say oh that's bad or

some

thing if you like more power to you if you can keep up cool I can't that's why this video exists um so I'm going to tell you some of the reasons why I stopped using it in December of last year.

I just deleted it from my phone and tablet somewhat unceremoniously. I didn't even delete my account if you can do that. I don't know if you can do that on Instagram. I didn't delete my account. I didn't do a story about it. I didn't post anything about it. I didn't do anything, so the truth is that he's just kind. It would be like a bit of a dormant account unless someone links me to their art and wants me to see that it's only on Instagram. I'll take a look at it, but I won't be interacting or posting anything there anymore. because it's stressful for me, it's too demanding, I know Instagram has been creating all these features because they are owned by Facebook and Facebook really wants you to stay on their

platforms

but all they have been doing is copying other people's stuff like this I know, what was that app along with Snapchat?

Do people still use Snapchat anyway? They basically stole stories from Snapchat and then it became an integral part of Instagram and then Instagram really wanted you to start using this new feature because stories were everything. You know Snapchat was the big thing and everyone was on it. I never used it so they basically required you to use it and if you don't you don't get any visibility, it can't just be a regular post, it has to be that way. it was stories and posts and then they implemented igtv, which I guess was supposed to be an answer to YouTube, so it could be full videos, for as long as you want, I guess, in the portrait phone format, which, first of all By the way, it's disgusting, no one wants to film it. in that format it's not practical, I don't see many people using IGTV as much because, again, it's not very easy to use.

I've tried to use it before and it just didn't work and again they did it I guess so. a response to youtube because youtube was doing very well and again they wanted you to use it, then they saw that tick tock was doing very well and they implemented this thing recently called reels and it's basically just the tick tock app grafted onto

instagram

. First of all I don't even know what tik tok does besides trying to be vine or I don't know what it does I'm not into tic toc I don't get the appeal sometimes I watch tic toc videos but I just don't I don't know , short videos really aren't enough for me, but they want you to use all these features in addition to posting regularly on Instagram so that you can have a chance to be visible because they I see that your account is active and that you are doing things and that you just you're generating all this content and it feels like a Sicilian approach to having your work seen as an artist and no, I can't do that. that's too stressful, there's an interesting article I read recently titled "Why Your Instagram Engagement Sucks Right Now" by artist Granny Loon um and they're on Instagram and I guess someone from Instagram interviewed her because her engagement was so good and they wanted to interview her and tell her to give her tips on how to best use Instagram and a lot of that has to do with a lot of the features that they want you to use and how often they want to use it and it's really overwhelming. read this article even if you are not doing things, so I will link that article below in the description and if you can guess, you can tell from the way I am talking about this article, the article is really good. but what they want you to do on Instagram really sucks.

He had it very bad now. I used to be on youtube watching like oh

instagram

algorithm may 2019 what you need to know and oh instagram algorithm this date what you need to know and how to stay up to date and what you should do and how you should post on other people's things people and you have to post eight times a week and at least five times a week and I'm like, bro, I don't understand I paid for all this mess, no I can't, and on top of that, I felt like I was always behind and it was very difficult for me not getting really obsessed with the numbers and the numbers game and looking at what everyone else was able to do, as opposed to what I couldn't do and it was so much work, so much mentally exhausting work, that I don't think I would really like participating in him and I really tried to keep up. with the trends and what people were doing and draw this in your style in inktober and july and I couldn't do any of that, it was too fast, I was in the middle of a lot of other things in life and Instagram was It doesn't pay me, so which I eventually stopped using it and the last time I used it was probably in November, I posted or September or something, it was a while ago and since then I just kept looking at the Instagram icon and sometimes I blankly click on it and scroll vaguely before thinking, man, I'm not actually doing much with this app and every time I open the app I thought, wow, I'm so inactive! there's not enough content, I'm not doing it well enough or worse, but my art isn't good enough for Instagram, maybe I shouldn't post here and I felt that way for a while and I didn't want to feel that way anymore so My best Solution was to just delete the app and pretend it didn't exist there at all and if any of you follow me on Instagram, feel free to unfollow me if you want, I don't think I'll post there. anytime soon and if I post there again I'll probably start from scratch because it's an old account and I really don't want to do it if I did it all over again well if I did. another instagram account I don't think I would follow anyone I think I would just post my art because following people gets really overwhelming and sometimes they bother you like, what do you like? who do you follow? and it's like I don't really think that's the best way to interact with other people or other things.

I just want to post my art somewhere and I don't think it's Instagram right now, not to mention their format is so bad that it's not. Its user interface is not great. I've heard it's optimized better for iPhone, but I don't have an iPhone and it's really not great on an Android system as my keyboard will block half of what I want to see when I can't even. Watch what I'm typing because my keyboard will block it and I don't know if anyone else has this problem. Let me know there is no real way to fix it, even when I make the keyboard horizontal it doesn't work.

It worked really well for me, so it's not very intuitive anyway, so yeah, there are a lot of reasons not to use it in terms of alternative types of other

platforms

for art. I've been contemplating going back to tumblr because now that everyone's gone it's nice and quiet and I can see the art a lot easier. I'm also thinking about Pillow Fort. Pillow Fort I have one, it's been in beta for a while but I know they have a community there, I don't know how. active is out there I have to go look for some more but I know people were so mad at tumblr that they abandoned ship for Pillow Fort and Pillar Ford was like yeah come on and then everyone got over it and then responded from everyone scattered on Twitter , which by the way is my main platform of choice.

I feel like I can start conversations much more easily there. The media tab is not the most intuitive because it doesn't really archive your work very well and it's Sort of not, it's not great, it's not great for sharing media because I like the moment when you share your art, you have between 10 and 20 minutes before it disappears among 20 other tweets and then people might miss it, that's why people say It's okay to just retweet your art because a lot of people might miss it and Twitter is so fast paced that they might not even appear all together, like in Instagram, but with Instagram they don't really want you to post. anything, so once you've posted that's it, don't ever repost the same art again unless a theft account reposts your art, but that's another story for another day, anyway, Twitter is my main platform, you can follow me there at vulturegeists.

I like to talk there I like to talk to other people there I like to share art and repeat art and it's the easiest way for me to share things and just talk also I like youtube youtube is very good for artists um I know It's like a A lot of work plus just making a video and being a part of that community, but for me I think it's worth it to see them comment below even though I might not get many comments. but I really appreciate each and every one because I like being able to like or reply and it really sparks the conversation and see what you guys think about it.

I started on Deviantart. In fact, I still have my old account. I still have access to my old account and I recently posted some artwork there but I still don't know how I feel about it so a lot has changed for better or worse so I'm not sure how I feel about it but I will definitely be lurking there just to see if I want to post more there or not, but other than that it's really hard to find a decent platform to post art on that one. I'm not asking you to do 10 other things besides your art, so yeah, it's about I think artists have to be picky about this kind of stuff because we have to find ways to communicate with other people and have decent visibility as all of us.

What we want is a chronological timeline, that's all we want and we never get it. It's all about ad space and seeing how much a platform can sell because they have to make money to keep the platform free, essentially, but either way it's pretty annoying, so that's my video. for today for you, I hope you enjoyed it, let me know what you think. Are they on Instagram? Do you like Instagram? What have been the ways in which you have coped with the way Instagram changes every two months? I can't go on Keep going if you can again I admire you but for my mental health I will stay away but please let me know what you think of this video and comment below okay until next time take care of yourselves.