Is it me or is Instagram shit?

Cyberpunkd

Member
I follow very few accounts, almost all of them athletes, so there is no much new posting going on every day.

But then Instagram just dumps useless shit on me - it's not even ads, it's random accounts that have the same shit content constantly recycled:

1. An image of an athlete
2. Some statistics that might or might not be relevant
3. Shit one sentence (mostly inspirational bs) + description that follows the same lines

Either that or some random account of a random athlete posting something stupid, most of the time something "omg, I'm so grateful to have been able to run at this event, what an incredible experience". All of these are copy/paste more or less following the same template. Is there a "grateful Instagram post" prompt floating somewhere?

I'm actually really happy with Jakob Ingebrigtsen (worlds best middle distance runner) since the bro just doesn't care, he only posts about:
1. His wife and daughter
2. His cars
3. Running

There's barely any fluff.
 
i recognized Your problem too. it's hard to avoid especially in home screen.
i saw lot of things i didn't like, press the button, still the same, kept going worse.
i left since 2022, and never comeback.

i was micro influencer back then, IG algorithm and rules are worst these days. i think it's started since early 2022. some of other micro influencer, who took the hit as well, talked about IG is losing themselves, started by forced to use reels because it's more engaged : /
 
It's trash. I get notifications from accounts I don't even follow (or recommendations that they have posted something I might be interested in and its just some random bot account). Boring reels and ads en masse making it cumbersome to follow what you friends post.

It's so fucking annoying. I fucking hate social media. It's such a time waster just designed to make you a mindless drone that does nothing but scroll all day. Fuck Facebook and Instagram and every other fucking social media app on internet. Burn it to the ground.
 
Imagine hating the internet when it's literally overflowing with free porn. Be serious
Some of us have more intellectually driven needs

classy GIF
 
...Does amazon, etsy and ebay count? But yeah the internet died a while ago. not like it used to be back in '05
It really pisses me off that I wasn't able to find NeoGaf until a couple years ago. Looks like this site was pretty lively from 2018-2023.. it feels like waking up too late to enjoy a day, and then missing the sunset by minutes, too.
 
There's a "snooze suggested posts" option that hides those for 30 days and I believe you can just keep enabling it.
so much this.

IG wants to push useless crap to your feed, but if you are not active using the app, such as following others, "liking" other people's posts, or rarely making posts/reel of your own, then its algorithm just struggles.
 
It really pisses me off that I wasn't able to find NeoGaf until a couple years ago. Looks like this site was pretty lively from 2018-2023.. it feels like waking up too late to enjoy a day, and then missing the sunset by minutes, too.
Knew about it since 2012 but didn't make an account till later. It's still much better than the alternatives out there.
 
Last edited:
The whole internet sucks now. Tell me one site you actually like, aside from Youtube & this forum.
Praise the fucking sun. This and GAF. I go on X/Twitter, but I am merely a spectator. I'm also not even giving my true opinions on things unless it's anime or some funky shit like that. I'm staying out of hot topics, etc. Call me paranoid. IDAF, because it's true.
That said, monetization is what happened to the internet. Youtube are fucking Infinite Cunts for All Time, with those damned ads. I want to get Brave and get Adblock and such, but I am just so tired of these browsers holding all the keys to your digital kingdom. Full stop.
 
That said, monetization is what happened to the internet. Youtube are fucking Infinite Cunts for All Time, with those damned ads. I want to get Brave and get Adblock and such, but I am just so tired of these browsers holding all the keys to your digital kingdom. Full stop.

If it's free, you are the product, etc.

I don't mean to pick on you with my reply, Dirk Benedict Dirk Benedict , because I hate the ads too and completely understand where you're coming from.

I think that the problem is that most internet users are uncomfortable with paying to access online services that have a cost attached. There's a feeling that everything online should be free, even if it costs money to make/promote/distribute.

Related to this topic, Everyone who can't stand the state of most video game journalism you'll encounter online (I'm one of them) probably ought to consider how much it costs to produce good quality journalism, how much we feel we ought to pay for that and what the effect has been and will be if people choose not to pay.

With no offence intended to anyone and I must stress I'm only commenting on what I see, not attempting to call anyone out, I regularly see people asking how to get around paywalls, or copy and pasting articles for those who aren't prepared to pay. At that point we perhaps ought to ask if a producer ought to be allowed to set their price for their product or not and if we are prepared to pay any price at all for a product we want to consume.

I don't really know how we ended up here, even on Neogaf where people seem very aware of the decline of journalism in games, and most people seem to be old enough to remember when spending money to read a magazine was a completely normal thing to do, I don't get the impression that most people would consider paying for quality journalism. And because of that attitude across the whole internet, we have clickbait instead. Articles and interviews sliced into pieces all designed to carry adverts, because that's the way to get paid when people won't pay for the product.

So yeah, the choice is that you pay for the product or they sell you to advertisers.
 
Last edited:
I don't really know how we ended up here, even on Neogaf where people seem very aware of the decline of journalism in games, and most people seem to be old enough to remember when spending money to read a magazine was a completely normal thing to do, I don't get the impression that most people would consider paying for quality journalism. And because of that attitude across the whole internet, we have clickbait instead. Articles and interviews sliced into pieces all designed to carry adverts, because that's the way to get paid when people won't pay for the product.

So yeah, the choice is that you pay for the product or they sell you to advertisers.

I think it's harder to rationalize paying for something you can't physically hold & put on a shelf. Most people seem to be dopamine monkeys and don't really think about consequences for their actions that are several steps ahead of right now (ie long term effects or effects on systems much larger than just them + their computer/etc).

And I think like basically every bad situation that may have been preventable if it was caught sooner, we got here one small step at a time.
 
I think it's harder to rationalize paying for something you can't physically hold & put on a shelf.
Perhaps, but people don't have a problem with paying entry to a theme park, or a concert or a museum. The idea of paying for an experience or knowledge isn't a strange one. Plenty of people have subscriptions for netflix or even pay in for a podcast they like.

I actually wonder if it's that the internet has been synonymous with free stuff for so long that is why it's difficult. That there's a whole understanding that the internet is the place for free stuff, not the place to buy things (if they're consumed in a browser too).

It might be better if companies moved their stuff off the internet browsers and made them exclusively available in apps if they wanted to move away from the ad supported hell nobody likes, but seem to be unwilling to bring to an end by paying a fee.
 
Last edited:
Most people seem to be dopamine monkeys
Indeed, and this is scary. I sometimes see people scrolling through Instagram or Tiktok reels very fast like they try to get as much video as possible in the shortest timeframe.

I don't use any ot these stuff (never used Instagram cause I've been told it's for sharing pictures, and I don't, never used TikTok cause I've been told it's for small music videos, and I don't really care for that, and I stopped using Facebook cause it's full of bots and old people) so it's super weird from someone who doesn't know how these things work.
 
I don't use any ot these stuff (never used Instagram cause I've been told it's for sharing pictures, and I don't, never used TikTok cause I've been told it's for small music videos, and I don't really care for that, and I stopped using Facebook cause it's full of bots and old people) so it's super weird from someone who doesn't know how these things work.

I think they're broadly quite similar now. Instagram was about photos but it's now pretty much all video.

The thing that I found surprising was that my view of Tiktok is not accurate now. Before I thought it was little blog clips or events or whatever, lots of funny clips (or attempts 😛) only with a younger skew and more focus on trends, things like dances, or whatever (I installed Tiktok briefly before deciding it wasn't for me).

But, with time Tiktok has become a breaking news source for lots of people. I remember someone at work telling me that if he heard that there was a big news story breaking, he'd look on Tiktok to see what was going on. I initially thought he was joking, but that is apparently a thing.

I assume that these platforms will try to be all things to their userbase. If it keeps them watching and interacting (and being able to be advertised to), much as Facebook has ended up being for older people, then you can bet they'll keep doing it.
 
Last edited:
If it's free, you are the product, etc.

I don't mean to pick on you with my reply, Dirk Benedict Dirk Benedict , because I hate the ads too and completely understand where you're coming from.

I think that the problem is that most internet users are uncomfortable with paying to access online services that have a cost attached. There's a feeling that everything online should be free, even if it costs money to make/promote/distribute.

Related to this topic, Everyone who can't stand the state of most video game journalism you'll encounter online (I'm one of them) probably ought to consider how much it costs to produce good quality journalism, how much we feel we ought to pay for that and what the effect has been and will be if people choose not to pay.

With no offence intended to anyone and I must stress I'm only commenting on what I see, not attempting to call anyone out, I regularly see people asking how to get around paywalls, or copy and pasting articles for those who aren't prepared to pay. At that point we perhaps ought to ask if a producer ought to be allowed to set their price for their product or not and if we are prepared to pay any price at all for a product we want to consume.

I don't really know how we ended up here, even on Neogaf where people seem very aware of the decline of journalism in games, and most people seem to be old enough to remember when spending money to read a magazine was a completely normal thing to do, I don't get the impression that most people would consider paying for quality journalism. And because of that attitude across the whole internet, we have clickbait instead. Articles and interviews sliced into pieces all designed to carry adverts, because that's the way to get paid when people won't pay for the product.

So yeah, the choice is that you pay for the product or they sell you to advertisers.
Apple basically fucked the entire internet when they added ad blocking to safari.
We had a nice status quo there for awhile where tech savvy people could block ads if they wanted and the rest of the masses were still getting ads and bringing in revenue for content.
Now giant swaths of the interent are locked behind paywalls or 'we detected an ad blocker'.
 
The internet peaked in 2009 or so. Back when smartphone users and apps were too small of a market to focus on exclusively and the general assumption was that people were only using the internet at home at actual desktops/laptops or at work.
 
Mine is full of racism, boobs, and chill relaxing clips.

That Kanye West Hitler song and Erika popping off whenever I go on it. Im not sure if it becuase my wife is German, it hears her speaking and recomends that shit maybe lol.

It is all so shit though, all social media is shit now, I still have X but hardly load it up, the only reason I have Instagram is to watch reals my Wife sends and to stay in contact with a few people. Im happy though as I find myself not useing my phone so much anymore, When I game, watch films ect the phone goes down and I leave that shit alone.
 
The only thing I use is like a yearbook. I don't like using Facebook or Instagram.

I'm not interested... the bad thing is that they post cultural events there.
 
Now you know why every US company wants TikToks algorithm.

Every social media sites algorithm is absolute garbage, except TikTok, hence why you're getting trash on your screen.
 
YouTube is the best for tutorials, I have Facebook just for marketplace, x is nothing but news, instagram I deleted yes a gutsy move but it's in the graveyard with the likes of MySpace, Skype, yahoo messenger, vine, Snapchat and I can go all day long without looking at social media.
 
the entire thing is just a free ad platform for only fans sluts
Every few months I wipe my saves and try to deliberately reprogram the algorithm to give me just useful stuff, but inevitably within a week or so it's back to OF girls as 95% of the content it pushes at me. God forbid I open that "Search" function next to my wife, it is 100% chicks with tits popping out. I'm like "sweeite, I never click on this stuff, I swear!"

narrator: He clicks on it
 
It's so fucking annoying. I fucking hate social media. It's such a time waster just designed to make you a mindless drone that does nothing but scroll all day. Fuck Facebook and Instagram and every other fucking social media app on internet. Burn it to the ground.
This.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom