Instagram is a monster that feeds on your emotions, it is a marketplace that runs on your data. It is not a tool for political change, and worse than that, it is pushing us against each other because the most salient content it needs is extreme content. On Instagram, we are data points that scream into the void of the advertising pipelines of Meta (formerly known as Facebook).

First, why am I writing this? Because I am afraid my generation suffers from the illusion that doing very simple actions like tapping on a glass screen to upload photos on a privately-owned social network will create a snowball effect of political change, and if they don't do that, they feel guilty, and their mental health deteriorates. They feel personally responsible for the ills that rot the world. Political change is possible but I firmly believe it is about sustained collective action in the real world, and not individual digital action. Most people say they "don't care about politics" yet hope for the better. We need to change that.

Instagram is a privately-owned social network that makes money the more you consume and interact with it. Most of the time, we are aware of this. We see it for what it is, a tool to fry your brain on senseless content (doomscrolling and brain rot). A place of comparison where we are communicating with people who we know (if we have less than thousands and thousands of followers) to position ourselves in the social group. But some dissonance causes us to think that we can sometimes "be serious" on Instagram. It is owned by Meta (formerly known as Facebook), which Mark Zuckerberg owns the voting rights of. The content is irrelevant as long as the engagement metrics are here: time spent using, number of interactions, etc. Every single thing you do, from how many times you watch a reel, the number of taps you make, how long you look at someone's story is recorded. Petabytes of data are created hourly to improve the machine. Smarter people than you and me spend their days optimizing for these. It is designed for engagement above all else, and such a system, even downstream, cannot be seen as a tool for political change. It is controlled and designed for other things. 

At first however, some social networks were designed to foster connection and exchange between people, that was back in 2007-2012. Then, the ad business model made Facebook a real threat to Google because it was growing so much. They bought Instagram and WhatsApp, and now control the tools with which we communicate. The tools of communication must be seized! (if we want political change from them).

I am worried the mechanics are as follows: we see something disturbing, we post about it thinking it needs to be shared widely, we feel slightly relieved by doing "a little thing which is better than nothing", we get some biological release of feeling good, we see other people doing the same anyway. We get angry at others who don't do the same. This is because Instagram is about mimetic behavior. Instagram is about comparing ourselves to others, and that's it. It was built by people who thought the design paradigm of the "news feed" was "an empty vessel for the mind". It pits us against each other on a digital arena. Isn't it weird that we “know” for a fact that when people share stories they are curating their lives, but when we are sharing political content, we suddenly are "serious". It is the same thing. Because the medium is the message.

The theoretical framework underpinning social media is now well-known. Mimetic behavior is at the core of the design principles of these platforms. Mimetic desire, a theory by René Girard is an idea that both Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel (one of Facebook's first investors) deeply believe in. Is postulates that there is no original desire. We copy the desire of others we believe as more legitimate or higher status, that it's all about the social group. The same goes for behavior. This creates comparison and competition and favors social tensions (the infamous polarization problem that plagues American society, and that will plague other Western societies that import their culture from the United States, such as France).

I have seen the best minds of my generation I know share information they thought was truthful but it was made by satirical accounts. I have seen competition and insults among the Lebanese because some were "posting" about Palestine, and others were not. I have seen stories with dead children then some about partying, then dead children again, asking me to watch or else I'm a bad person. Because Instagram does not require you to think about how others view your content, it incentivizes you to post no matter what, resulting in these absurd Story viewing experiences.

"Raising awareness" has been used over and over as an outcome of social media posting, but I have not seen any significant political change because of it, especially when it comes to international politics (and not societal issues, more on that below).

What does raising awareness mean, and how is it more helpful to the people we are raising awareness for, than the people doing this work? Raising awareness, without measuring impact, which is what most people do, is done because of social signaling. The same people who were criticizing Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into war are the ones who celebrated some of its victories later — we play these games to position ourselves in the social group. The high Lebanese society is a quintessential example of this.

Instagram makes us believe that "every little helps", but "it don't". We can raise money, and raise awareness with it, so that's not nothing, but we cannot create lasting political change. What changed in Lebanon after 2019 and everyone changed their profile picture to little red circles? What changed after everyone posted a black square in June 2020? What changed in Rafah after all eyes were set to it?

We have raised awareness so much that people have become numb to the awareness. The human mind adapts to the darkest shit, observe your own acceptance of extremely bad situations that you personally lived. Repeated exposure dilutes resistance. This is learned helplessness and we all suffer it in different degrees.

Political change happens in the real world via collective action. Political change happens when the laws or the people who make the laws are changed. Political change happens when we get involved in politics and we don't say "I don't care about politics". Political change may require out of bounds action in order to move the current people responsible away. Have we fallen so much that we believe that we can move the equilibrium by stroking the small lamp that is your phone? 

During the French revolution, people who were less than 25 fought and died to change the system. Did you think the king wanted to leave?

My core point is that political change is possible via real-world collective action, and not the aggregation of individual social media activism. Indeed, the group in the real-world is more than the sum of the parts, where it is merely an aggregate here.

Societal causes are different than geopolitical ones.Social media has brought changes in gender relationships, because the problematic actors (men) are much more reachable here than the actors of geopolitical action. Slowly, shame is changing camps, and men are starting to realize they need to treat women with respect. The reachability of the problematic actors is the core difference between geopolitical and societal issues, and the effectiveness of Instagram for change.

I am not morally better than you dear reader, nor am I a paragon of political involvement. But just like anyone else in these dark digital pits, I express myself.

I urge my soon-to-be former friends and soon-to-be enemies not to feel guilty for not posting about the destruction of the world. It will not change anything, you do not have to do it, you do not have to contribute here. If you want to get involved, either change the law or change the people writing the laws, or put your physical integrity at risk, if you so desire. But peeing in the ocean is not worth your mental health because alone you are powerless. 

Instagram is not an instrument for political change. It is where you watch your friends post for social motives, whether they accept it or not, and myself freely admitting to it. It is the virtual schoolyard from high school, it is not the public town square where your powers of Athenian discourse generate the desire to change the world. Because it is made to make just YOU feel certain ways: entertained, sad, excited, angry, etc. So you consume further with it. It is a monster that you feed with your emotions.