Aside from the nation states that are weirdly not signatories to the Mass Selfie Treaty, the last time the collective world lost their egotistical minds over a modern advancement was following the creation and unveiling of the phonograph, the 1877 innovation of the first device to record and play back audio.
Believe it or not, the phonograph was not invented by the ubiquitous Apple. Or Samsung. As if it was invented by Samsung. They are still struggling to work out a reliable method of searching GIFs to add to text messages.
No, it was little known light enthusiast, Dr Thomas Edison, and it made him a celebrity. He even Broke the Telegram when he posed naked with just a light bulb covering his…brain.
 | |||
| Sponsor me. We can be great together. How can I butter you up? |
Edison was involved in the invention of the electric light and the telephone, which was just the start of the master plan to ensure future generations had as many options as possible to communicate with people they hated in high school.
His first recording on the phonograph was of Mary had a Little Lamb, and then it all went major slippery slope when rappers got hold of it, a-yo bitches. Instagram and its social media peers could potentially be a vehicle to viscerally change the world, but find me someone who hasn’t whiled away important hours of their day looking at baby goat Youtube clips. Someone other than Thomas Edison.
Anyway, I’m a keen purveyor of going off on tangents, so back to Instagram. The other morning I decided to Instagram my food, because a few reasons:
(a) I have a Mickey Mouse-inspired toast cutter, which trims the bread to the shape of Mickey’s noggan, and that requires worldwide showcasing;
(b) all the cool kids are doing it;
(c) sometimes I naively want to be one of the cool kids;
but mostly (d), I accidently woke up at 0445 and I must have been profusely sleep-deprived.
I have a new appreciation (I don’t) for the Instagram-obsessed who walk among us, and then into lightposts and trees because their heads are literally in an iPhone app. I want to start a new meme trend which will entail taking photos of iPhone users with their head in the iCloud and then superimposing it onto a cliff edge, or walking off the rim of a firey volcano, or into the mouths of sharks. Just positive stuff like that to make non-wankers feel good.
There’s so much to think about re. planning any foray into Instafoodland.
The Right Light
First, you must wait until the light is right. The right light is all of the things that are important. Given my early rise, I had to wait about eight hours before the damn dawn happened, so I just inhaled five cups of coffee and waited.
If I had an extra three hours and the schedule of a celebrity - which seems to be remarkably similar to that of an unemployed person - I could have riddled my crumpet with sun flecks that would make the butter shimmer and mouths drool with insta-envy, but I didn’t, so I didn’t, and the only people who suffer are everyone on Instagram.
Hashtags
You gonna need a hashtag son; you gonna need a real good one. There is absolutely no point at all in any socially acceptable way in creating an Instagram post if you don’t use witty, pithy words and phrases that make people laugh out loud or cry tears of self-pity.
The number sign, or hash, aka “#”, used to be the most boring symbol in the whole symbol world. Now, thanks to it’s elevation as Instagram’s global superstar, it is outrageously famous, hangs out with The Kim Kardashian, and, like Prince, insists that people refer to it as a symbol.
My only hope for the future is that one day it remembers where it came from, and goes back to its birth name, Gary. Personally, I believe hashtags have #jumpedtheshark, which incidentally has over 3,000 posters at present, which is just mocking what I just said. I'm mocking you Instagram, not the other way around.
Likes equals self-esteem
Don’t fall for this. If people don’t like your post it means they are living their own life at that point in time. I know! - they be weirdos. But I’m sure the time will come when they are 100% invested in your life (it won’t). People like other people’s posts in the hope that the “favour” will be returned. You know there’s a problem on planet self-esteem when there are apps where you can buy “likes”. Yes you can.
1,000 draft photos
How many photos do we need to take until the creation is perfect? Oh, the crumpet is in the dark. There’s too much shade. Why is there a crumb on the plate - this crumpet cannot have crumbs. Should the coffee be in there too. That’s not the crumpet’s good side - don’t upset the talent. It’s all just too hard so eventually I gave in and hired a cherry picker from a construction company for an hour to get the right height and perspective. Money well spent.
When you start to think of people who make money from their Instagram by taking off their clothes as a bunch of talent-free, antisocial pariahs who are genetically incapable of feeling shame or self-respect, it makes it quite enjoyable.
Some social media tarts have come out to tell the world how hard their inst-life is, and how long it takes to set up a photo and how many they have to take to get a good one and it just makes me really sad for them because my proper job isn’t hard at all. I just wish there was a way I could help their plight that involved somehow making their suffering so much worse.
Delete that post and move on with your life
After 23 hours of Crumpet Time, I eventually deleted the post because I didn’t want my conceptual art, replete with mockumentary hashes, to offend anyone who takes instaphotos of food for a living, especially not the people who use the hashtag conceptual art.
No comments:
Post a Comment