Issue No. 17︱Monday, July 1, 2024

Goodbye and farewell, bitch.

What’s better than kicking off your day with some doomscrolling on Instagram and seeing invasive, secretly recorded videos of people during a slip-up in their lives? Literally anything else. This is one of the many reasons why I hate Instagram. It's just endless amounts of content you didn’t ask for but can’t stop watching. They want you to be there, so they don’t care if you don’t want to see it. No matter how much you say you’re not interested.

This has been the case with Instagram in my experience. No matter how much content I like or how much I say I’m not interested, someway, somehow, the reels find me, and they’re always the same. Here’s a video I filmed of a stranger during a mishap in their life. Now let me add a funny, relatable caption, and people will love it. I’m going to get so many views at the sake of another person. God, how I love the dopamine rush.

It’s going to be so great to see all the people come together in the comments and collectively bash on this one stranger, all because of me! I’m bringing people together! I wonder how many followers I can get from this? This content is the only thing that brings value to my life. I could keep going, but I digress. The point is that this is basically the only type of content I get recommended on Instagram, and I can’t handle it anymore.

Yeah, maybe it’s because I don’t follow anyone and I’m never really on the app, but I just don’t have any interest in actually spending my limited time on this planet on that platform. It doesn’t add any value to my life, and I always feel awful after being on it. It's strange how once upon a time in my life I could scroll through any social media without feeling an ounce of anxiety, but let’s not get into that.

Now, like many others this day and age who create some kind of art, I’ve tried my fair share of posting to Instagram. I’ve always found myself feeling pathetic for even trying to post on any social media, thinking that someone might look at it and think, "Wow, this person is really trying their hardest and getting no results. How pathetic." But about six months ago, I decided I would go all in and try posting the correct way to Instagram.

This meant doing research on how and what I should post. Which led me down the road of finding the right tags, how many to put, and how you need to be posting short form vertical video content if you want to make it. I found all of this to be overwhelming and demotivating. I don’t want to post video content; I want to post photos. I thought the whole idea of Instagram was to post photos, but I guess the corporations just have to compete with each other.

After seeing so many stories of artists failing on the platform after so many changes to the algorithm and my own posts going nowhere, I started to give up hope. The nail in the coffin for me was Instagram announcing that they plan to train their AI with everyone’s posts, with it being difficult to opt out. So, after no success, I’ve decided to close my Instagram journey.

It’s been short and not very fun, and I will not miss you. This is the end for me, Instagram. Me leaving will have no impact on your success, but I felt the need to announce it anyway. I bid you adieu and suck my dick.

Time to Find Some Zines

I discovered zines about a year ago, and once I did, I couldn’t believe I had gone my entire life without knowing about them. You mean these are just free little books about any subject you could think of, created by independent creatives? The idea inspired me. Sometimes all the different ways you can go about creating art can be overwhelming. Even though zines can be about whatever you want, it seemed so easy to narrow down my ideas. I began to think of all the different zines I could make.

I discovered so many zines from so many people. It was wonderful to see all these people create whatever they wanted. You can find zines about literally anything. Sort stories, educational, comics, and countless other subjects. I loved seeing how creative others could be, and that wasn’t all that I loved about them. I loved the idea behind them.

The ability to craft and create a little book about whatever you wanted was my favorite part. There are no rules. Want to create a zine full of images of your cat wearing a hat? Go for it. You can create these little booklets of art to share with others and collect your own. I found myself wanting to go out right then and there to find some zines to collect myself. So if you find yourself wanting to create whatever you want, look into making a zine. Or if you want to find some new free topics to read, well, then it’s time to go find some zines.

Is Cara the Killer?

Is this the end for Instagram?

If you didn’t know, a few weeks ago, Instagram announced they would basically be using everyone’s posts to feed their AI. In response to this, many artists began to flee to a new platform: Cara. Cara is a social space used to showcase your art and connect with fellow artists, promoting only human-made art. Many claimed Cara was the Instagram killer. So how has that held up a few weeks later?

Well, first off, I’d like to say that I also joined Cara. I have only posted once, but all the excitement made me not want to miss out. From my short time there, it seemed to be a bit difficult to get a following if you didn’t already have one. Which is fine and similar to many other platforms, but most of the people on Cara are artists themselves. So if you are looking for a place to promote your work and possibly get sales, it doesn’t seem like the best place to go.

Though some are in it for just the love of sharing art, I respect that. The idea of the app was very appealing to me, and I’d be happy to keep posting there. It’s just a bit exhausting to have to move to so many social media sites and start from scratch. Cara seemed convenient to me, having a place that combines the likes of Instagram and Twitter (I’m not calling it X, fuck Elon Musk). It felt rejuvenating to have a place to post both types of content. Whether or not Cara really is the Instagram killer is yet to be revealed, but unfortunately, it seems it won’t be.

Blueberry Month

What’s blue and a berry? Obviously, it’s the blueberry. And what can you do with blueberries? So many things, and July is Blueberry Month, so you could take this time to try all kinds of blueberry related items: pies, cookies, cakes, tarts, muffins, cobbler, smoothies. The list goes on and on.

Go get your blueberry on!

Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day

July 1st

Vanilla? Chocolate? These flavors might be the favorites, but today is for the lesser known ice cream flavors. Try some of the wackiest flavors you can find, or maybe even try making your own. Whatever you make, it can’t be worse than mint chocolate chip.

Disco Day

Disco baby, disco baby! It’s Disco Day on July 2nd, but can we just appreciate the disco ball? How beautiful they are! How neat they are! Disco balls are just so damn cool. Fuck, I love disco balls!

Drop a Rock Today!

Drop a Rock Day is this July 3rd, so you should, as the name suggests, drop a rock. But don’t drop just any old rock; no, drop a rock with a nice message on it, in hopes that maybe someone will find it when they need it most and see your encouraging message. I myself have found a rock or two with messages of support, and I took them. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to, but I still have them to this day. I also really like the handwriting on one of them, and I wish it was a font.

July 5th

Thank you for reading the blugg newspaper.