Bitch, don‘t kill my vibe!

So here I am, again at a point of a complete overload mixed with frustration, tons of ideas but constant failure of realisation of the above created by a platform that used to be so inspiring for me two years ago.

Two years ago:

The pandemic had just started and we were in lockdown. I haven’t had worked for almost three months and I started running. With every new thing that I begin, I follow the same pattern. All in. After two weeks I did my first ten Kilometer run. I ran very early in the morning and I enjoyed the month of may, spring finally kicked in and the rising sun tickled my grey-ish winter skin when I was on the last Kilometer before my home. All in.

Back home I took a photo with my iPhone of a little rose that I had put in our balcony. It was different to the other snaps just because the light looked better. A little later I would learn about the temperature of light and how it changes throughout the day. I will always remember this photo as being the one that hooked me into a new hobby. I wrote: “If they won’t let me work, I’ll become a gardener”, signed it with ‘Hans Norbert’, a stupid nickname some brilliant mind gave me back in the days (it was myself) and posted it on Instagram. That was the beginning. I started posting everyday and added little and funny, often very sarcastic captions to my posts. My signature move. Something unique. I replaced the iPhone with a Canon DSLR and took it with me everywhere. I turned my Instagram account from a privat into a professional one, I started watching YouTube tutorials about photography and I felt really recognised, not only for my writing but also for my photography. It gave me confidence, the interaction on Instagram was great and fulfilling. Instagram wasn’t everything but it played a huge roll in my photographic life back then.

Through the gram I got in touch with a guy of similar age and in a similar life situation, he also posted everyday and he also added  captions to his posts, quite a bit wonky and strangely phrased but at least something. Later I would learn that he took the idea from somebody else’s blog. A signature move of his - taking other‘s ideas and re-create them in his own, very special way as he would later explain to me.

However we started having  great conversations via voice messages that could occasionally reach the length of a podcast. We should have recorded it and call it “the controversy of middle aged white men.” Although I never really liked his photography for the most part, we became friends. Or bro’s. Or whatever you want to call it these days. But it’s important for the continuation of this story.

While he was very obsessed of creating a successful Instagram account, I was very obsessed with getting better at photography. But to be fair, it was easy for me to put it that way because my posts back then were performing way better than his and I always had 100 followers more than him. 100 followers. It seemed to have been the magic number. It was my definition of success on Instagram. My mistake that would come back at me eventually. He congratulated me when I had reached  500 followers, he also noted respectfully that “now you’re where I am already”, when I was followed by more people than I followed and this was the first time I realised that this guy could actually kill my vibe.

One year ago:

I got sucked into the bottomless pit of analog photography. All in. The fun on Instagram was gone, my money also. I felt pressure when posting. Is this image good enough? Fuck, I need a caption. I’m addicted. Can I just add something cheesy to my caption, like my companion who now felt more like a competitor? No, I don’t want to cringe people off. Soon he had the same amount of followers with way less effort. At least I thought so. A week later he had hundred more. Another hundred more another week later. And so on. He wouldn’t get a lot of recognition for his photos in terms of likes but tons of comments:

“Nice tones, bro.”

“Sick framing, dude.”

“Vibes.”

And he would always reply:

“Glad that you like it.”

It seemed that he had built an army of commenters around him that would praise every shot of him to heaven. It was unreal. After a while his photos got way more likes than mine and I lost it. He was everywhere. Every photo that I got to see was already liked and commented by him, his name seemed to appear on my feed like he was online 24 seven double tapping every photo until his hand would hurt like mine when I was about 13 and MTV launched its German subsidiary showing Mariah Carey clips on heavy rotation. Spice girls also. All of them except the sporty one.

Subsequently I blocked him. He texted me ten minutes later (how do people find out that quick?) but I never got back to him. Not only was I a hater (which I hated about myself) but also I was ghosting him completely like my ex girlfriend ghosted me after she gave me a kiss, left my apartment and never talked to me again. But at least I felt better for the moment.

Nowadays:

I deactivate my Instagram from time to time.

It’s not about you, I know you’ve been reading every post, every blog that I pulled out, you studied every photo and caption and you knew that some of them were aiming towards you, some shot directly at you. But not exclusively,  there‘s a little of you in everyone of us, everyone is a little Thorben sometimes but you are NOT Thorben. The constant search for recognition has taken away our individuality, it makes us post the same photos all over and over again, we claim to understand what the algorithm wants, thus we post what we think gets recognition and engagement and of course I am guilty in the same way as you are and every one else is to a certain extent. We’re all made equal by this toxic piece of shit of instagram.

Remember you told me you don’t like photographing vintage cars? Look at your most liked photo ever. It’s a photo of a very vintage Mercedes Benz. Do you know what my most liked photo was? Also a car. And you know what? I hate cars too. And yes, I do check your profile sometimes when I’m drunk, like I’m typing my ex’s name into Google only to find out that she completely disappeared.

You became the blueprint for everything that I hate about Instagram but this is not your fault, as you just milk the cow like this guy who spends most of his time in a metro station shooting Cinestill or the other guy that spends too much time in a metro station shooting Cinestill or the other guy that spends too much time in a metro station. Equality.

I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be bitter. I don’t want you to hate me the same way that I don’t want to hate you. I just don’t want to become like you and all the others as I want to be a photographer not an Instagramer.

On the other hand I am really happy for you. You always wanted to have tons of followers and you were honest about it all the time. You are now where you ever wanted to be and I salute you to your success. I think that you deserve it because you spend a lot of time for that. I am serious when saying this. However, you did not lose me as a friend because I was jealous, you lost me because of our opinions about photography and social media where drifting apart drastically. And then it got personal. Sorry about that.

Congratulations for 10k.