‘You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a person by their Instagram profile’

Living in New York City for the past year has helped me to realize two things about social media. One: it is essential. If you study at NYU, “where the Hipster gene flows in everyone’s veins,” then there’s a high chance you have already grammed an aesthetic portrait of our real mascot, the Washington Square Arch.

Maybe you’ve even posted similar pictures for each changing season, as an additional reminder to your followers that your tenth floor library views are, as cringeworthy as this may sound, #goals.

My second realization is, perhaps, even more important: you cannot judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a person by his or her Instagram profile.

I came to this realization when one of my friends considered deleting his most recent post with a Serra sculpture at the Dia:Beacon art show because he was concerned that it had not received at least 200 likes. I told him how profoundly shallow his reasoning sounded and that, regardless of his embarrassing like count, both his photograph and the artwork in it were stunning.

Update: He kept the post and received his (well deserved?) 200 likes.

What initiated as a ridiculous argument turned into an subtle observation of my friends’ social media behavior. I noticed that we would consistently send each other Snaps or group texts with the words “like my insta” whenever we shared a moment with our followers. And perhaps, we do not visit these exhibitions for his sole appreciation of art, but rather to post about it and obtain “double taps” of approval – ones that, when fail to surpass the socially acceptable threshold, can cause us to question whether the photo was even worth sharing in the first place.

Like my friends and I, I know there are hundreds of other users who fall into the absurd perception that social media is an opportunity to prove to others that our lives are actually worth following. What used to be an authentic sharing of memories has now transformed into a collection of filtered snapshots that portray glamorized, but often deceiving, versions of our lives. And thus, the reason we spend hours trying to find the best lighting for a ten second Snapchat, consult every group chat before uploading photos from last night’s party on Facebook, and interrupt strangers for a “naturally” posed photo with our friends is because we think a like on Instagram or a view on Snapchat is worth the struggle, and ultimately, satisfaction.

That is, until we realize that we cannot mask these insecurities and our seemingly dull lives with over-thought captions and overused puppy filters.

Instagram (left) vs. reality (right)

This new metric of success – likes and followers – is the reason I am even writing about, what many of you would agree is, an irrelevant topic. I am aware that social media is awesome and addictive, but there’s something about its growing influence and the values it is inflicting among young audiences that worries me.

Perhaps it’s how these applications can implicitly transform the superficial thoughts of whether our photo will receive hundreds of “likes” or whether our crush will watch our Snapchat story, into daily, normal and thus, reasonable concerns.

The fact that Instagram recently changed its algorithm to ensure that only the most liked and popular posts remain at the top of our feeds, demonstrates this shallow mentality. Just imagine what would happen to our like count if one of our posts coincided with an over-produced and fan-adored Kardashian selfie-burst! Crisis.

In all seriousness, I agree that social media has improved the ways we construct a first impression, but only to a digital extent. Something that I assume most of us are aware of is that these online personas are not the primary representation of who we are, and for that reason, we cannot judge another person by his or her Instagram profile.

So, for those of you who do stuff just to post about it, remember that a like on Instagram, a view of Snapchat, or a reaction on Facebook does not change the experience behind the lens.

Also, if there’s anything this city has helped me understand, as illustrated by the image above, is that we don’t need a filter to add more color to our lives (literally and figuratively).