A Judgmental Look at the “Photographers” Who Use Instagram

A Judgmental Look at the “Photographers” Who Use Instagram

Article by Black Betty
|
April 25, 2012
Tweet

There are two kinds of people in the world—people who use Instagram and people who don’t. That about sums it up. Within the category of Instagrammers, there are many pretentious, conceited, and dumber sub-categories of people who utilize this self-indulgent service. A picture with a magical filter over it may be worth a thousand words, but Instagram has yet to develop a filter that would make me actually give a shit about one of them. And now that the company has sold its billion dollar soul to the devil that is Facebook (C.R.E.A.M. get the money), you can expect to see these categories of chuckle-heads cluttering up the trash heap that is your News Feed much more frequently.

Hipsters: Go ahead, drop a knowledge bomb from the photography seminar you attended (that was one afternoon) to get perfect lighting, angles, and focus to take a (supposedly) artistic snapshot of a dog licking its own sack. We fully expect you to blather on with comments about the picture for weeks as you not so subtly pepper in buzzwords like “exposure,” “b-setting,” and “Annie Leibovitz.”

Romantic Lovers: Alright, we get it. You think that if you upload enough photographs of handholding or watching sunsets, everyone will think of your relationship as the greatest love story ever told. But don’t you see? It doesn’t matter how many “precious” pictures you upload, it still can’t bury the fact that she’s fucking his best friend, that he’s addicted to painkillers, or that they both hired a guy to murder her mom for the life insurance money.

Food-tographers: Without a doubt, these people are one of the most common (and annoying) types of picture-takers in the Instagram world. Nobody cares about what you’re eating at a restaurant or what you made at home. Furthermore, no one cares about the obscure bottle of wine that you’ve paired with it. The only result of posting photogenic food is earning extra credit in the smug asshole/Bono universe. In reality,the only thing these pictures provide is food for obese people and wine aficionados to rub their meat to.

Vacationers: Although common before the dawn of Instashit, vacationers who photograph the islands or skyscrapers they’re so cool to be seeing are even more annoying now. They just love to show off with that goddamn “Sutro” filter that makes you feel even shittier about never leaving the Midwest. Whatever. I hope that you get taken on vacation. And that Liam Neeson doesn’t come save you.

Attention Whores: Why, it’s a picture of you in a bikini when the temperature is just over sixty degrees! How original, you clever betch! For starters, I already knew what you looked like naked from the Halloween album, and second, the blurred out filter isn’t very effective at hiding the hickey on your left tit, that weird mole on your face,or that “beauty mark” that has an uncanny resemblance to a very particular symbol from 1940s Germany. All of this adds up to an immediate unfollow.

iPhone Newbies: Great, you’ve figured out how to work the camera on your iPhone and subsequently filled your computer’s hard drive with nothing but pictures of puppies sleeping on fuzzy blankets. At least your pictures capture how truly mundane your life is.

As for the actual photographers who only shoot film, digital SLRs, underwater disposables, or the fisheye cameras from Urban Outfitters that Instagram tries to imitate, keep doing what you’re doing. Keep fighting the good fight. Snap.