Mirror mirror on my wall, look at who I follow to see through it all.
While the U.S. Congress and hashtag-trolls bitch about the all-powerful-yucky-Zucky, ya’ll forget that the devil is in the details you give. You want privacy ay? You want to remain the mystery woman of the night? Boys wanna keep their Tristan Thompson game? Well wee’z about to get real-as-phuck right now. Leave Zuckerberg alone, dis shit is on you.
Having an instagram is like having a home address, it’s a place where you live, and a place that you decorate and constantly reinvent yourself. It’s a place where you discover fetishes you never knew you had, like butt girls, oozing fudge brownies, fuzzy pups, before and after hungry hoes… whatever you look for, there’s a destination for you to travel to on IG. It’s a space to invite your friends and watch not-real-story reality selfie shows. It’s your best fake friend that you share every moment with. Giving your instagram ‘screenname’ (yeah, I’m old school like dat) to someone you just swiped right on is so so very much more than giving your digits. When someone asks for your IG, they are inquiring in the same way of some crystal loving unemployed Venice dweller who asks what your sun sign is. Your instagram can make or break someone’s opinion of you, it can make you undateable, unemployable, and unreal.
Song: Freaky Friday by Lil Dicky feat. Chris Brown
In case you’re wondering, I’m a Virgo – seductive, serious and hyper aware. I see it all.👁 Yeah, yeah, and my instagram is @digi.ching. Yup. Already you’re judging by the name alone.
I’m having a hard time with this one. My core stance is built upon not judging a book by it’s cover, BUT
Is who someone follows a cover or is it so much more? Rather, is it pages into someone’s book?
Look at your instagram wall right now… Seriously look right now because someone could be thumb-judging this very moment. Does your IG wall accurately represent you? Just looking at it, mine doesn’t. I’m constantly reinventing my style and my style and feelings change everyday.🦄I personally don’t like looking at images from the past, as a true candid it a rarity. I truly believe and live by the moral that there are no rules and you’re allowed to delete, unfollow, and start over again and again. The problem is when Kanye with millions of followers deletes his shit, he’s an artist… When I do it, I’m just nuts. There is legitimate value in the number of your followers. Some days I feel like a dark digital torchered version of Elizabeth Gilbert, other days I’m a gratefully curious traveler, and many days I’m just a girl that dreams of living in Maine and having a family (two boys and a lumberjack husband to be exact). When I look at my wall, I get insecure and ask myself,
“Looking at this, would I date me?”
Probably not. In fact, a recent head of a company asked to meet me in person because he wasn’t sure if I was “crazy” or “mad talented” whilst looking at my content. There is one thing that does accurately represent me and it is who I follow. When I asked myself if who I followed represented me and my interests, then looked, it blew my mind🤯, but what was even more OMFG was when I started to look at who my friends followed. It 100% represented their personalities and interests. Spot on.🎯 What looking at someone’s followers doesn’t do is tell an individual’s story or what they’re thinking, but it gives more information than most would probably want to give.
Are you reading facebook-haters?👎🏾👎🏾👎🏾
I played a game with myself (cause I’m so lonely with my phone)… Before looking to see who my friends followed, I guessed if they followed Elon Musk or the Kardashians and I was always correct.
First of all, EVERYONE, follows the fat jewish. Secondly, this is
Look into their crystal wall.🔮
😂 (I’m getting funnier?)
You can break down their interests in 5 categories :
👆🏽One. Figures – who they admire and consume like Dan Bilzairan🍑 or Hilary Clinton👵🏻
✌🏽Two. Objects– things they want – like cars🚗 and wedding dresses👰🏼
🤟🏾Three. Fantasies and beliefs – what do they dream about – like weddings💍, hot guys reading books💁🏽♂️📖, travel🌍, helping people👶🏿, feminism👯♀️, political parties🇱🇷,etc.🤷🏼♀️
🖖🏽Four. Hobbies– If they like snow🏂or sun☀or surfing🏄🏽♀️or art🎭or travel🛬or aggressive mukbang eating👅🌭(if you don’t know what this is, click here RN)
🖐🏾Five. Information – the type of information they like to consume like BBC, Vice, TMZ, NPR🤓, Stock Markets, TV Shows📺, Magazines, or nothing at all.😵
Then you can figure out if someone is simple or complex. Seriously depending on who they follow, you can tell if they more left or right or no brained.
Based on my following,
One. I am into tech and innovation leaders interested in the future.
Two. I don’t care for a lot of objects.
Three. I like guys that read and have wonderlust for magical looking places.
Four. I love digital art, blunt thoughts, experimental animation, and to surf.
Five. I’m into hipster and old school information sources like Vice and Publishing Houses and NPR.
My walls says I’m a creative that photoshops reality to look like a fantasy… It also says I have many interests like crypto-currency and out-of-the-box thinking, but unlike most, I spend hours on my content. I also followED wedding stuff because my beautiful friend is getting married and I started to look for wedding ideas for her. I’m a girl that’s never cared about a wedding or a white dress or a diamond and I noticed the more I consumed it on my instagram the more unconsciously I started to think about “Maybe I want to get married soon?” Was it me or my instagram telling me this? I don’t know. FML.
What does your instagram following say about you?
How serious should we be taking instagram? As serious as you want, but TLG has learned it is fact that if you are an avid Instagram user, then you should be taking it very serious. Shit💩, people make millions off of instagram alone and that should be enough to make you think twice that it is not only a tool, but a commodity that holds value. Accurate metrics are crucial. Everything you do on instagram holds value not just to advertisers, but to lurkers. What value do you place on your insta?
“Your internet identity should be worth something. You invest hours of your day forming your internet identity from building your public image to gathering information you ‘like’” – said crypto TLGer Ryan Tanaka
TLG took it to our texty-fingers to see how much who you publicly followed on IG mattered and here are THE FACTS.
We asked 68 TLGer’s:
Do you ever look at who someone follows on Instagram?
25 out of 34 men texted “Yes”
25 out of 34 women texted “Yes”
Total 70.59% of TLGer’s look at who someone follows on instagram!
If you look at who YOU follow, does it represent you accurately? (Example, people you’re interested in, things you like, what information you prefer consume)
27 out of 34 men texted “Yes”
28 out of 34 women texted “Yes”
Total 80.88% of TLGer’s instagram following accurately reflects who they are.
If you saw someone followed someone you disliked like Trump or lots of Butt Girls or Puppies or Porn Stars or Vegans… Would your opinion change about them?
17 out of 34 men texted “Yes”
22 out of 34 women texted “Yes”
Total 57.35% of TLGer’s opinion would change based on someone’s instagram following.
(BUT if 70.59% of TLGer’s are looking at some someone follows, then why is the other 13.24% even looking?)
Would you date or not date someone who solely based off of looking at their Instagram? Could someone’s Instagram turn you off?
15 out of 34 men texted “Yes”
30 out of 34 women texted “Yes” (WOWWW!)
Total 66.18% of TLGer’s would date or not date someone based off of their instagram.
Here were some of our favorite responses!
Who you follow says a lot about you, in fact, it might say just enough… I’ve never cared or even looked at who someone followed until I started to study culture for TLG. The people who pretend to brush of instagram as no biggie are the ones that take it the most serious, spend the most time on it with their cloaks of invisibility, and are the one’s who deeply look into other’s instagrams and judge heavily based on a photo; and this fascinates me. The one’s who preach about being OG disrupting badasses are the one’s who pay for bots to follow and unfollow someone once they get a follow and their hypocrisy fascinates me.
“It’s weird now when someone says they don’t have an instagram. It’s like, what’s wrong with you? I have to see someone’s instagram to get them.” -chats Crypto-Girl Cam
When dating, we all do it – internet stalk and look for compatibilities in people we’re interested in, but more often we look for the worst, we look for why not to date someone. If you’ve swiped, then you know it’s become the norm for someone to ask for your IG and let them be creepy before going on a date.
Although many successful relationships come from dating apps, more times than less someone doesn’t appear or feel like their photos, so instead of wasting time on going on a date, viewing an IG can help you further vibe someone out. It’s a way to protect yourself, but usually you just end up hurting yourself and forming a narrow-minded opinion because you begin to form a story that you were never told…
“He has an ex. Looks like they broke up less than a year ago. She has fake tits. I don’t think I want a guy that likes girls like that. He follows Dan Bilzerian and Kylie Jenner… but he does seem to really like NPR.” – texted my single TLGer friend.
What she was really saying was “What if he doesn’t like my body? What if I’m not his type? What if he’s not over his ex and I end up liking him? He seems really smart and could be decent.”
Song: Dan Bilzerian by T-Pain - feat. Lil Yachty
Oh the infamous followers of Dan Bilzerian. After writing about Butt Girls, I started to get insecure about not being sexy enough on my instagram. I feel pretty ga-dam sexy for the most part, but is that something I need to put on instagram? I’ll be honest, when I look at a guy’s instagram, it can and has changed my entire opinion of him.
“What’s your IG?” flirted @wolverine. I almost blurted it out, then bashed, “I’m not telling you.” After flirting and having a great conversation with a guy who had been eyeing me for weeks, he asked for my IG rather than my number or asking me out. Why didn’t I want him to have my IG? Honestly every time I give someone who I barely know my IG, I feel a little violated. Despite my animated robot face and singing about my student loans, I try to give more intention into what I post rather than Butt Girl photos. I know what would happen if he looked at my IG because I’m a virgo hyper sensitive x-ray vision fortune teller. I’d become someone else rather than the girl in front of him and I like who I am off social media much more than the girl on it.
When @wolverine asked me, “What are you hiding?,” I blunted, “I’m not hiding at all. I’m right in front of your face. Get to know me in person if you’re interested.” Yeah, I’m different like that.🙋🏼♀️Like everyone else, he claimed he wasn’t big into instagram and had just gotten an account and then word vommited out his IG name and immediately I judged it and OF COURSE I looked and you know what-the-phuck it did? IT RUINED all those weeks of flirtatious mystery down to a guy who simply was not for me. I can’t look at him the same now and that’s sad. He may not have been for me, but it wasn’t just that, I narrowed him down to a specific type of person… Someone who really loved selfies, only followed people based on appearance, and needed to post every moment of every day. I know that person because I fear becoming that type of person.
Was it good that I learned this early on rather than wasting my time trying to get to know someone I’d eventually learn these things about? I didn’t know his story or if deep down he was a good guy and I wish I had known those details before meeting the devil. I’d still much rather prefer to not see someone’s instagram and to treat them like a real human… but hey, he asked for mine first and freely gave away something much more than his phone number.
All this got me feeling, which lead to me write this article. I wanted to go deeper into how my brain reacted to seeing who someone followed. I decided to look at who two men followed and it deeply surprised me, I learned a lot more about myself rather than these guys. I learned I don’t care if someone follows Trump, but I really do care when guys follows several butt girls. I want to be someone’s dream girl. I also learned I don’t want someone who is an exact mirror of me, but rather I want someone who is open minded that I slowly get to know, maybe a friend first and who is a mystery that I get to solve. I too want to be that for someone. I once dated someone that walked, talked, and acted like me, but when it came down to it, the core of our wants were polar opposites despite our similar following. For me, less is more and what someone likes on instagram doesn’t matter (except for butt girls!)… It’s what’s on the inside that counts. 🙂
Apparently almost everyone looks, I’m just the only one with the tits to talk about it.
Moral of the Story
Again, the devil is in the details. If you want privacy, then you simply have to be private. If you decide to travel down the yellow brick road, know that you’ll end up in a dark forest, will be hunted, and it’s up to you to find the light overshadowed by the weeds.
If you obtain any social media account, it’s time to stop saying that social media doesn’t matter. It matters. Your phone has become your second home, strangers are peeping in to steal shit, and it’s not something you can so easily disguise, but you can choose how you decorate it and who you invite in and where the windows are…
Thanks for reading this Never Ending Store Window, The Last Gen. Good day to everyone except Tristan Thompson.
Mel Blanchard Gong
p.s. If you like TLG, please share it. I’m having a hard time getting it out there and it’s part of my dream for it to spread. Thank you. 🙏🏾
p.s.s. I’ve decided to follow Dan Bilzarian… because like I’ve said many many many times, I’m a hypocrite at the top of her game!.. and he’s my enemy 😉
Song: God’s Plan by Drake
A Special Thank You
Thank you to everyone who partook in this poll and for all your responses. My heart always explodes from what I expect people to say to how ya’ll actually do. You are what makes the culture of TLG! <3 The culture is building!
Social Media Predictions🔮
Your instagram wall will become much more than a wall of photos. Facebook has become less relevant and I predict and can imagine an entirely different platform of how instagram will become much more of a formal passport than it is now. Facebook, I’m available for hire! 😉
In Other News
Hating on Facebook is like hating on Bitcoin. No one is making you get on it. No one is making you like photos or connect your accounts to it. Facebook is a free app that has provided not only human connections, but billion$ for third party companies. This Cambridge Analytica bullshit is bullshit. The dumbasses that were effected by uneducated election ads on facebook made by Russians were already not going to look into facts. We should spend more time setting higher journalist and human to human conversation standards then shit on a guy doing more than all us hungry trolls bullying for a #hashsational moment. I’ve never heard anyone say, “I am on facebook to be a private person.” I expect my data to be hacked at all times. The only thing private is human to human trust or silence or what dogs are really thinking. # # #FIXYOURSELF
The Zuck makes me sad that I never lived in college dorms. Imagine the possibilities. The end.
Subscribe, because I’m trying really hard in this life R.N.
