Well, I am blown away by the response to my last post discussing the blogging landscape.
It appears that more and more of us are tightly gripping on to our original platforms, with many seeking to either start a blog or re-align their blog’s purpose.
Personally, I continue to feel personally victimised by Instagram. (Daisybutter reader points if you read that in a Mean Girls voice.) That darned little app of squared images continues to play me daily: do you want more hashtags from me? Shorter captions? More video content? A lock of hair from my first-born child?!
More and more, I’m noticing that creators are pandering to the Instagram algorithm. Don’t @ me, it’s just an observation. It started as a bit of an inside joke: ‘Are you even a blogger if you don’t drink your coffee cold? Are you even a blogger if you haven’t shot at Peggy Porschen?’ And over time, it’s moulded creators’ content where once the content spoke for itself.
What first drew me to the world of blogging was the ability to share whatever you wanted, in an unedited, unfiltered form. Here was a platform where you could see how 15 or so other women styled a popular Primark dress, used an eyeshadow palette in infinite ways, etc. Yet these days, and not to tar everybody with the same brush, it can be hard to assign an image to a blogger because everything looks the freaking same.
I get it: much like traditional media, there are certain codes that shape our world. Readers and followers recognise that a home cloaked in white marble with brass accents = a blogger’s home, that a jaunty pose beside a pretty building = classic outfit photo. But what about everything else? The reality?
For me, I strive to produce content and share a feed that’s semi-curated. It’s edited, of course, because not everything needs to be shared. My friends and family didn’t sign up for this, I don’t currently own the home I live in and I’m also mildly concerned about online privacy. But I aim to shoot in places I’ve actually spent time at, instead of travelling miles to ‘get the shot’ outside a colourful wall completely irrelevant to my day/caption/life.
I still share unpolished mess-lays, semi-candid outfit snaps and vignettes of the magic in my everyday mundane. My travel photos are less girl-in-gown-on-cliff and more hello-where-does-the-line-between-blogger-and-tourist-end.
Ask yourself this: What do you want to impress on the globe?
Is it a curated feed full of hotspots you’ve seen countless times? Is it a visual document of your glory years? Is it creative content that made your soul shine? Is it to log your progress as you strive for your goals?
Whatever the reason, keep it in focus.
It’s all too easy to scroll through your feed (curated by Instagram’s algorithm, remember) and feel like you have to keep up with the rat race. Of course it’s fine to be influenced by your feed, naturally that’s what happens when we consume media content, but let’s start a new chapter and question exactly why we feel pushed to buy into a certain product, emulate a certain aesthetic or even define our goals in a certain way.
