I’m not sure to what extent my parents stalk my various social media accounts, but the one thing they keep telling me is: “Don’t put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want everyone in the world to see.”
This is a fear we all hold very close to our hearts, as a generation who grew up in the midst of social media’s rising popularity. You don’t want a future employer to peep those photos of you getting drunk off Raspberry Absolut in your friend’s basement apartment. But recently, social media, and Instagram in particular, hass become more than just a way of sharing daily shenanigans; it’s become a networking tool, and a platform to showcase your very best self. Artists of all stripes use it to share photos of their work, and pretty people can sometimes make a living off of posting selfies. Even for us regulars, Instagram can be a place where we don’t feel entirely comfortable sharing everything (depending on how many of your extended family members/potential employers/ medium-quality high school friends follow you).
Enter: The Finstagram. Urban Dictionary gives us the following definition for this term coined on the website in 2013 by user “Girls That Are Cool”: “Finstagram, finsta for short, is a mixture of Fake & Instagram. People get a second Instagram account along with their real instagrams, rinstagrams, to post any pictures or videos they desire. The photos or videos posted are usually funny or embarrassing. Only your closest friends follow this account.”
If we consider that Instagram has only been around for 6 years (it was released in 2010), “finstas” or fake instagrams, have existed for half of this time. However, they have met a recent surge in popularity, due to many factors. A: as Instagram gets older, users amass a larger following, a growing pressure to keep up a “theme”. Having an Instagram theme usually implies sticking to one specific kind of post; be it based on colour, aesthetics, content, a themed feed stays consistent. Of course, a themed feed also racks up more followers (lifestyle, food, memes). But is it truly representative of that user’s day to day life? Probably not.
I made my finsta last February when I realized that I wanted my real Instagram (or “rinsta) to be a place where I could post my artistic work and network with other artist friends. But, I also needed a dumping ground for screenshots of my roommate’s funny texts and some less-than-pristine selfies. So, I made a private instagram account that I only shared with close friends. I won’t disclose my finsta handle for the time being, but I will say this: having a finsta has actually helped improve my rapport with social media in general. I hadn’t felt free to share what I actually wanted to share on any platform for awhile. I felt that I didn’t want to be “annoying” or share intimate details of my life with followers that I barely knew. However, that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to share… It can be extremely cathartic to post anything on a whim, without having to “filter”, so to speak, your appearance or your thoughts. I know that many people believe that social media makes you feel alienated from the real world, but in my case—in the finsta case—it brought me closer to the people I love.
