Death to All of Them (Finstas)
For an added effect, listen to this album while you read through this newsletter. It feels distinctly of the time I used Finsta the most. Another sensory experience to consider would be to eat really greasy onion rings, which were also huge for me then. Choose your own adventure.
At this point, it feels absurd to define the word finsta. To type out the words “fake Instagram”… it’s painful and mortifying, really.
Finsta, simply, is an alternate, private Instagram account made to be shared with an inner circle. It’s a space designed for unpolished photographs and unfiltered captions, holding back little for the imagination. Without the pressure of performance (likes, comments, seeming mentally stable and interesting, looking picture-perfect), we confessed the truth of our misadventures to an audience of close friends and very bold acquaintances who asked for our handles at parties. (Why they did it, I don’t know. Did I give it to them? Every single time.)
I googled “death of Finsta” expecting/hoping to see 0 search results, further proving that I am a cutting-edge thought leader and voice of my generation, but obviously there is a smattering of op-eds and blog posts from the past few years that proclaim the flatlining of the cultural phenom that is the fake Instagram. Let’s pretend I got there first.
Truthfully, I’m not even really here to pronounce Finsta dead and feel it's worth disclaiming: I still have and operate my own account. How it is used, however, has changed drastically. These days, I can go 6 months or more without posting to the grid, as opposed to days or (shamefully) hours. I’m not using it to fill in my friends in the way that I was in 2017 when the cultural movement peaked, particularly after the app rolled out its version of “Stories,” so smartly nabbed from social competitor, Snapchat - I’m not dependent on it to connect or report. It has shifted to being another tool in my social media arsenal - deployed for right-place-right-time content. But around 2017, Finsta had me in a chokehold.
It was the trend everyone around me jumped on. A friend would make one and convince you to hurry up and figure out a pun for your username, otherwise, you might miss an all-important life update. I created my profile and made my first post on October 23, 2016. It was a screenshot of a text between me and my best friend, Missy, asking her to procure a photograph of me dressed as “spaghetti and meatballs” from elementary school.
The costume in question was a table-cloth-covered cardboard box, with a hole cut for my head, affixed with a paper tube of fake flowers, an empty glass, and plastic cutlery that my mother helped me bring to life. A paper plate lined the hole, and various yarns mimicked the delicacy that is spaghetti and meatballs, hot glued all around me and onto a forever transformed New York Islanders baseball cap. It is adorable and hilarious.
I wore it to perform a monologue for the Halloween-day audition for my school’s Odyssey of the Mind (a creative problem-solving competition - holding for applause) troupe. The prompt or “problem” my team had to tackle required us to “create and present a humorous performance about three Eccentric Characters that demonstrate odd behavior, peculiar mannerisms, and unconventional dress.” It also stated that the plot needed to address “a team-created "problem" within or involving an Earth system -- the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, geosphere, or hydrosphere.” We wrote a play about 3 misfits (one, an escaped felonious circus clown) banding together to make the owning and operating of Hummers illegal (This is the second newsletter in a row to mention Hummers…it’s probably nothing, but someone should make note of it). I played a penguin who narrated/choked on car fumes. They actually stopped making Hummers for 10 years because of that skit. I’m basically Greta Thunberg.
Finsta is its own odyssey of the mind. The problem at large? Wanting to fast-track your way through the fake into the real. Or at least into what was not necessarily safe or comfortable viewing for loose acquaintances, co-workers, or family members. To be self-deprecating, gross, emo, or all three: a magic cocktail.
It was Ole Golly from Harriet the Spy who said, “Remember that writing is to put love into the world.” Of course, she said it in the context of emotionally reaching an 11-year-old girl who bullied her entire school within the confines of her private journal (original Finsta vibes), but perhaps she also meant my Finsta.
Here are a few times I put love into the world:
Every once in a while, I’m inspired to read through my Finsta like an anthropological artifact. I feel like I should be wearing special gloves just to hold my phone, as if the posts will crack, crumble, and flake away like ancient papers in my hands.
My Finsta most consistently chronicles my sophomore year of college and the foolish escapades, heartbreak, and turmoil that occurred within it. During this time I worked in an ice cream shop, saw the movie Trolls 3 times in theaters (we’ll talk about it another time), changed my major, and lost my mind. And it’s all there, captured in grainy iPhone selfies where my nostrils are absolutely the star of the show.
There are hundreds of posts. One is a video from after I got my wisdom teeth taken out during what I thought would be a very different dental visit. Countless pictures capture the miserable fun of drinking Four Lokos. In many of them, my face is marred with constellations of the kind of acne you get when you do not eat or sleep well. It is a time capsule I didn’t have the foresight to know I’d be making, a digital shoebox filled with lackluster trinkets of varying meaning (Please, no one tell Bo Burnham. I cannot bear a follow-up to Eighth Grade called Sophomore Year.)
There is an equal instance in this space to be funny and vulnerable. A post could be a one-line comment connected to a completely out-of-context meme, but it could also be a video rant about something deeply painful. There is a sacred imagination to it - to what you can say and do on it - I have used it to kvetch, cry, share my “favorite screenshots of x year” from my photo library, go live to review new menu items at Dunkin Donuts, and more - all while my Rinsta (real Instagram, for those learning as we go) sits ignorantly, showcasing my finer, or at least saner, moments.
I’ve found in the last few years an encouragement/trend on social media to express/feign (depending on who you ask) authenticity by performing a certain type of messiness - that is, to invite glimpses of imperfection onto your more public-facing profiles. A series of selfies followed by a random photo of Bernie Sanders. A bunch of photos of trash on the sidewalk. A rogue TikTok interspersed between a birthday party and a concert. These barely-disruptive additions are the smallest of blemishes; they hint at the idea that we are less calculated about what we put out there while being completely calculated. Moreover, it’s microdosing Finsta-behavior in its most palatable form: quirky relatability.
And it’s not like Instagram hasn’t taken notice. As users have adapted the way they use their accounts, so changes the app. With the recent advent of private Instagram stories, Finsta’s pulse dwindles. I know several people who made the switch cold turkey - abandoning their alt accounts to relegate their more premium content to their “close friends” story. “Close friends” acts as a miniature, more temporary Finsta - with posts there disappearing into the ether 24 hours after they appear, instead of being burned into the forever of the internet. With this added feature, there is the further proliferation of who you trust and in which digital circles - those who can see your main’s regular story, main’s private story, Finsta’s regular story, and Finsta’s private story. Exhausting, right? Have I used all 4 in one day? Yes. Brene Brown would have a field day applying this knowledge to the anatomy of trust, probably.
A few months ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal questioned Antigone Davis (a movie star name, should she ever pivot away from being the Head of Global Safety at Facebook which will likely result in eternal damnation) about Finstas, asking specifically, “Will you commit to ending Finsta?”
Blumenthal received a lot of flack for this question, but I stand with him. Let’s buy everyone a journal and call it a day. Truthfully, I don’t know nearly enough about the hearing (and I did originally laugh at the question) but skimmed 2 articles that explained the quote was taken out of context. Blumenthal asked it because social media is still a lead cause of mental health issues and suicide amongst teenagers (if you can believe it). Instagram’s algorithms prioritize how the app can make itself more money over the safety of children, 100%. Finsta should not be for kids, because Instagram should not be for kids. I bawled my eyes out on my 14th birthday when my mother would not gift me her permission to create a Facebook profile, but she was completely justified and could see what I refused to at the time - social media has the power to do much more harm than good. (Groundbreaking, mic drop sentence. Never even been thought before.)
That said, I don’t regret having a Finsta for one minute, and while my activity on it outside of the story function has greatly diminished, I like that it’s a big scrapbook, an archive of so many situations and fiery emotions (that is until I die. Then I expect one of you to hack into it and delete it for good so I can actually rest in peace. Otherwise, I fear my soul will remain trapped and tethered to the Earthly realm. Comment below if you volunteer to free me when the time comes).
I’ve valued the ability to express myself to a small crowd, to track the many phases of my life - to be candid expecting nothing in return.
There’s a moment where it all becomes stomach-turning, the nostalgia takes a sharp turn from sweet to sour. A post triggers the memory of awkward conversations at parties and I can feel the embarrassment hot on my face like it is happening in real-time. I think back on old heartbreaks that I so carefully cataloged and am mortified by the version of myself who couldn’t move on more quickly (or at least more privately). A few years ago I peeled the stickers off the shell of my laptop that I so hoped would wordlessly explain my 18-year-old-personality to everyone in the library. But I love the girl who put them there, who selected each one to highlight some interest. I love the girl who made the Finsta, who posted the embarrassing paragraph caption that should’ve just been a phone call to any one of those followers or her mother. And I love the girl in the future, who will likely cringe at this very newsletter.
This life seems to be a never-ending embarrassment. Can someone get the Odyssey of the Mind kids on this problem? You didn’t think I’d tie us back to it, but I did. And I always will.
Big love,
kaylasomething