In her classic novel FrankensteinAuthor Mary Shelley imagines a monster whose fragmented body is stitched together by tendons. “The anatomy room and the slaughterhouse provided a lot of my material,” Shelley wrote.
It’s exactly the feeling of scrolling through Instagram, now the ungodly Moras sewn together features. This is an AI search tool! This is a shopping app! This is my last nerve. Instagram is experiencing a mature identity crisis and I am very tired.
Mimicking the features of other social media platforms and grafting them onto existing applications has been a long time Performing crime For Instagram owner Meta. Three years after Snapchat promoted the idea of “stories”, ephemeral posts only your friends can disappear after a day – Instagram launched a similar feature, also known as stories, that looks nearly the same. As time goes by, Tiktok becomes the hottest app in the United States, entertaining young users through endless vertical video reels, Instagram reacts again by adding its own version of its algorithmic video feed (Reels).
With Instagram continuing to add new features every time it blows in a new direction, UX has become a chaotic fusion of popular ideas from other platforms. With the popularity of e-commerce, the app tends to shop online. When Generating AI became mainstream, Instagram’s search bar turned into a chatbot. Originally a place to share photos, it was already a mess of a series of interactive smart features.
This week, Instagram decided to put more content into it. Most notably, the platform has added a map tool that allows your Instagram friends to see your exact location every time they open the app. It’s something you have to choose, but it’s still creepy. This feature has been nearly a decade since Snapchat released its similar mapping feature. The version of Instagram has sparked backlash from users, despite choosing, the app makes it easy to broadcast several faucets anywhere. Check out the map feature in my personal account, where I can always be the exact location of a random guy I met at a San Francisco party before, but never talk to it again.
Instagram also released its Friends Reels tab for users around the world. So now you can see what your friends have been enjoying and commenting on and what reels they choose to repost. From Tumblr to Twitter, these types of public conversions have long been part of online culture. Reposting won’t bother me. This is a positive push for videos I love, which is intrusive and similar to map tools. I am a saint and would never hit that heart button on a steam reel with only one wealthy model, but my friends are not that cautious. After scrolling through this new feed in less than 10 minutes, I saw my friends inciting multiple interactions that they might be embarrassed to admit next time I meet them in person. (I don’t know you like furry very much!)
