Welcome to 2015, a year full of several life changing and OMG moments. It has been in this year where gay marriage has been legalized, Caitlyn Jenner has been born, and Kanye West has declared to run for President. Obviously, I’m missing a few other great events, but it’s hard to keep track. However, there is one thing that helps us remain updated on our ever-changing society: social media.
Social media has changed the world in so many ways. Not only has it changed society, but it has also changed who we are as people. Let’s look at Instagram, for example. It appears that in today’s time, we care more about how many followers we get rather than having actual friends in real life. We focus on picking out the perfect filter for our photos even if it does totally change our skin tone. We care so much about how we portray ourselves on Instagram because we think our posts are an accurate representation of our personalities. While this may be true, I don’t believe that our photos solely represent who we are. Instead, I think our captions do. Instagram captions have seriously evolved over time and they definitely say a lot about your personality. Allow me to explain what your Instagram caption says about you.
1. The no caption.
If you don’t post a caption on your Instagram photo then there are two assumptions we can make. The first is that you’re really artsy, and felt that your photo was so powerful it did not need words to help emphasize its beauty. By doing this, your photo becomes something that your followers must figure out for themselves. This gives off a mysterious vibe to your personality and you believe that having no caption makes the picture much more sophisticated. Contrary to this, the second assumption we can make is that you probably don’t use Instagram too often and don’t care about having a caption.
2. The emoji.
If you use an emoji, or even multiple emojis, to caption your Instagram; this shows that your personality is simple, yet fun. You didn’t feel the need to go all out with a caption but at the same time didn’t want to leave your photo caption-less. It could also mean that you probably tried to come up with a really clever caption but couldn’t think of anything, so instead you settled for an emoji. When in doubt, emoji it out.
3, The song lyrics.
Using song lyrics for a caption can go either one of two ways. The first is that the song totally matches the photo and is super popular at the time, so you know all of your followers will like that you made a reference to it. The second is that your followers have never actually heard the song before and think that you just really like to make rhyming sentences. Regardless, using song lyrics definitely shows off your personality as it portrays your taste in music.
4. The hidden message.
I’ve been seeing this a lot lately. A hidden message caption is one where you use parentheses to uncover a different word or meaning within the caption you created. For example, when posting a photo with someone you really like, one might write, “Ba(e)sic.” See what that just did? Now not only is the photo basic, but it also emphasizes that whoever is in the picture with you is your bae. This type of caption shows that you’re funny, clever, witty, and sneaky.
5. The #hashtag paragraph.
When Instagram first became a thing, hashtags were everything. Now, it appears that some people still haven’t grown out of the hashtag phase. If you use several hashtags in your caption, this shows that you might be an attention seeker because the hashtags are probably going to get you more likes. I realize that I could be totally wrong about this and I don’t mean to offend anyone, but in my opinion, hashtag captions are pretty generic and bland.
