I really HATE Instagram – Wanna Know Why?

I am starting to think I am the ONLY person in the world who absolutely HATES Instagram. Everyone else seems to just LOVE it, but quite honestly, I just DON’T GET IT. I do have an Instagram account, because I’m a blogger and I more or less have to, but I never know what to do with it. Mostly, I just throw quotes out there and pictures from ComicCon or whatever I can think of.

One of my big pet peeves about it is the inability to post a link in my posts. I know you can do that link in profile thing, but honestly how many times do you go dig out the link to take the time to go to the post? I’ve done it maybe two or three times when there was a big contest or something, but usually, I won’t bother. Maybe I’m just lazy that way – are other people clicking through to the links?

I know the developers of Instagram all sat around in a meeting and made this decision. “Hey Bob, should we let people posts links?” “No Sam, why would we do that? It would just send traffic away from us and TO the users” “OK, but it’s just going to make them mad” “Hey, it’s a free tool, they’ll get over it”

I guess everyone did get over it because I seem to be the only one still mad about it. But jeez, it’s kind of annoying and to me, what’s the point? And this business about ONLY being able to post from your phone. “Hey Bob, let’s make them post everything from their phones. That’ll FORCE them to use the mobile app rather than a desktop application.” “Hey Sam, great idea! Because everyone’s phone is right at hand, so they’ll post pictures of every little boring part of their day”. “Yeah, they’ll be like – here’s a picture of the sandwich I just made. Here are the shoes I’m wearing today. This is a picture of my kid eating a bug. Here’s my dog – he even has his own Instagram account.”

Well, actually I do like the dog pictures. And the quotes. The rest of it – yawnfest. I don’t often find anything on there that’s very interesting, unless it’s a friend or a relative. Well – maybe the cool travel photo ones, but that’s about it.

And what’s with this whole Follow-Unfollow game? I do not get that one. On any other platform, when I Follow someone, I pretty much Follow them for life, unless they’re annoying or something. But on Instagram, it’s like this whole game to see who can get the most thousands (or millions!) of Followers by following and unfollowing people. This Mama ain’t got time for that!

See, I DID do an Instagram image for this, although I usually don’t. I don’t like Instagram much, but I DO use it. Sometimes

Then you’ve got this whole #hashtag business. Who has time to go dig up 30 different hashtags for all your posts? I guess people search on these things. Who knows? I usually throw a few of them out there, just for laughs. Maybe that’s why I don’t like it – maybe I’m just using it wrong.

I do have to remember I hated Facebook and Twitter too when they first came out – although to be fair, I don’t particularly love them now. Now, Pinterest is a different story – I LOVED Pinterest from the first moment I saw it and I still spend 90% of my social media time on Pinterest. So I guess it shows that I like pretty pictures, I just like being able to click through to them easily.

So, here’s the big question. What is it that you people all LOVE about Instagram? What am I missing? Am I doing it all wrong? It’s just a puzzle. I feel like there is a big party going on out there and I don’t want to miss it. Because #FOMO is a real thing, but jeez – why do I have to jump through so many hoops to join the party?