Former Instagram model Essena O’Neill quit social media to expose how “fake” the app is
We all have those friends that get an insane amount of likes on Instagram. You know the type - the person who can post anything from a selfie to a picture of a dirty sock and garner hundreds (or possibly thousands) of likes. Everything about the photo they take seems perfect, from the angle, to the lighting, even down to the colors. Whether it be a glamourous shot of themselves, a cute #CoupleGoals candid, or a mouth watering picture of cheesy-filled goodness (if you’ve ever posted a picture of your Umami burger, I hate you) our first thought when viewing these photos tend to be Why can’t that be ME? As harmless and fun as Instagram seems (its description in the app store reads ‘a simple way to capture and share the world’s moments’), it has become more of a fierce competition than a fun, cutesy, “Kodak moments”-type sharing platform. Essentially, Instagram is fake and ruins your self-esteem.
Former Instagram model Essena O’Neill made headlines earlier this month when she revealed that pretty much every photo on her page was staged. After seeing the many tan and toned models on Instagram, O’Neill began to starve herself and exercise obsessively all in the hopes of looking like the models she so greatly admired. Her Instagram began to accumulate a mass following - almost 700,000 followers! - and she would receive daily comments from young girls calling her their “goals” and “inspiration”. In a statement on her blog ‘Let’s Be Game Changers’ that resonates with young girls on Instagram everywhere, O’Neill says, “I believed how many likes and followers I had correlated to how many people liked me.”
On her since-deleted Instagram account, O’Neill actually edited the captions on all of her old photos to reveal the true nature of each image. In one, she stands effortlessly on a mountain top in a bikini, flipping her hair to one side and smiling sweetly off into the distance. “NOT REAL LIFE,” her new caption read. “took over 100 in similar poses trying to make my stomach look good. Would have hardly eaten that day. Would have yelled at my little sister to keep taking them until I was somewhat proud of this. Yep so totally #goals”. In another, O’Neill is pictured on a beach in a bikini after a run with her face candidly turned away from the camera. “This is what I like to call the perfectly contrived candid shot,” she wrote. “Nothing is candid about this.”
By bravely exposing herself, O’Neill shed light on a very important yet underrated issue: the fraudulence of Instagram. In her New York Times essay “Look Out, It’s Instagram Envy”, writer Sarah Nicole Prickett compares scrolling through Instagram to window-shopping amongst Paris’ or New York’s trendiest and most luxurious shops. When looking through Instagram's "Explore" tag or any celebrity's feed, it is almost impossible to avoid viewing extravagant images that give us a glimpse into the (annnd cue Good Charlotte) lifestyles of the rich and the famous. Even if it’s not a celebrity’s feed, people in general tend to only post what they think is “the best”; because no matter how delicious that greasy burger from your local pub was, you’d much rather Instagram the weird-tasting duck(?) dish that you ordered from TAO. And no matter how much you love your Nana, you’d much rather post that selfie with bomb lighting over that photo you two took where your hair looks bad. It’s sad, but it’s true.
The pressure to be perfect on Instagram has gotten so intense recently that this year’s newest trend is creating “finstagrams”, or fake Instagrams in which people can be more...well, themselves. These private accounts are usually under a fake name and - because the owner of the account only allows those they feel comfortable with to follow them - let people express themselves more freely and show a real(er) version of themselves. Double-chin #nofilter selfies, actual images from everyday life, and pretty much whatever the owner feels like posting without fear of judgement are what finstas are comprised of. If mainstream Instagram is Superman, finstagram is Clark Kent - a more realistic, humanized identity that people hide from the world.
So, the moral of the story here is to take everything you see on Instagram with a grain of salt. Most likely, what you’re viewing is not real. Nobody gets the perfect angle on their first try. Nobody eats delicious food 24/7. Nobody leads a life that is free of worry, no matter how many times they post a picture of themselves at the beach with the caption “Livin’ on island time.” Nobody’s life is as perfect as their Instagram wants you to believe.
