By 
Instagram is an absolute dumpster fire of humanity, and you should probably consider how you use it before it causes you to never enjoy anything again.
Okay, that’s probably a little dramatic. Let’s try that again.
Instagram hijacks our natural predilection for equating images with feelings and using that, tricks us into forgetting what we like, why we like it, or even what makes something a positive experience.
That’s probably about right, because think of how Instagram misleads us.
Instagram causes us to see this and assume these people are having a good time, even though people fight and stress on vacation all the time. Or more often, they have a kind of okay time, and kind of regret springing for the “ocean view” suite when the “ocean view” is only visible out of a two square foot bathroom window.
We see this person, and assume that they’re happy with themselves even though most of us aren’t, and their unhappiness could totally be why they look that way in the first place.
It causes us to think this looks delicious even though, have you had beets before? They taste like a sweet potato somebody rubbed on their foot.
We look at a picture and derive a thousand words in our heads, even though, on social media, a picture isn’t worth a thousand words. It’s generally worth, like, 9 words. Usually those words are like, “ocean,” “guacamole,” and “#girl.”
The words “fun, amazing, life-changing,” can’t possibly describe a picture, because a picture can be (and on Instagram, always is) staged, and manipulated, which means you have no idea what anyone involved is really feeling or experiencing.
We generally don’t think about this, and it kind of makes us idiots.
Instead, we see someone else go horseback riding in the desert and we think it looks so peaceful, and we think, “I want peace like that. I can never find it. That must be the solution to my problems.”
Then we get there, and our horse is an asshole, and it shits constantly, it’s a billion degrees outside and you forgot to use any SPF because you were busy thinking about your gram strategy, and somebody else in your riding group is constantly bitching about their vagina hurting, and it’s just not the majestic experience you were expecting, or that you were trying to electronically show off to your ex and your high school acquaintances.
If this ever happens to you–if you ever find yourself…
*holds in every ounce of potential vomit in my entire body*
…“Doing it for the gram,” but you’re not actually enjoying yourself at the activity, there’s a reason why.
Here’s what it boils down to:
Why Instagram Kills Our Joy
Your problem is that you go to a party to be at a party, and not to actually party. So instead of enjoying yourself, you snap some extremely staged pictures, hold a beer, and fret about whether you’re having a good enough time.
You’re marking off a checklist of happiness in your head, saying “If I do x, y, and z, my brain will feel better,” and happiness doesn’t work that way. It’s not a video game with levels you have to beat. It’s a complicated, nonsensical mess filled with mysterious misery, random fits of laughter, and poorly timed farts. It tends to come not so much when you try to cram it into your life to make other idiots think you’re cool, but when you chill the hell out and appreciate what’s already there.
Even outside of Instagram itself, there lingers an Instagram mentality throughout all of society now where we focus on accomplishing experiences rather than experiencing them.
There is this constant out-of-body perspective of, “Oh, I’m at that funky place that sells Korean duck fat fries in the hipster neighborhood. This is an experience. I got a good pic, and these fries are like, pretty good. Are they worth the drive across town? I don’t know. No, they must be! I’m enjoying this, right? Surely I must be having a good time,” we say as we pinch ourselves just to trigger some kind of emotional response and confirm that we’re still alive.
We’ve literally forgotten how to enjoy ourselves because we’re trying so hard to enjoy ourselves. We’re so obsessed with the fact that we’re doing the “fun” thing that we don’t actually have any fun. Our FOMO actually causes us to miss out on what’s important.
The end result of this is that we’re doing more than ever, enjoying it less than ever, and pulling way fewer useful tools and skills from it, because useful tools and skills don’t really gel with selfie sticks.
With all of that said, here’s the mind-fucking dilemma of this: new experiences do matter, and you are missing out on something if you don’t expose yourself to them.
Doing new things is essential to having a life that isn’t stupid. This is how you become better and make your life better in just about every single way imaginable. This is how you prepare yourself for life’s unpredictable horseshit. This is how you actually live a life, and not just a repeating simulation.
This is, very predominantly, how to not suck.
First and foremost, new experiences teach you how to live.
New Experiences: Your Only Real Teacher
Let me explain that, because I know, “Fuck teachers. They don’t do shit,” isn’t a super popular position.
What I mean is this: Someone can tell you all about how they prepare couscous in Vietnam, or what it’s like to skydive, and you can memorize exactly what they said, and repeat it back to them, but ultimately, with everything in life, you learn by doing. And at first, that inevitably involves doing a new thing.
If you want to learn how to golf, you can’t just read 8 paragraphs on some clickbait blog, like “Why you NEED to Learn to Swing like a BOSS!” and then suddenly know what the fuck you’re doing.
You need to go out there, and try to actually do things. You need to actually swing. You need to slice a ball off of the fairway and accidentally hit some old dude in the head. You always, always, need to suck at swinging first.
This same idea goes for everything. In order to understand the rest of the world, you have to envelop yourself in the rest of the world. You have to go to cities, you have to engage in trial and error, you have to learn to socialize by first making several awkwardly placed “That’s what she saids” in a work setting, only to get awkward looks from everyone around you.
You learn by doing. You always learn by doing. Even the most well-researched podcast is worth dick by comparison to the education you get by getting your hands dirty and totaling your mom’s car. This is how you become better, and that comes exclusively from new experiences.
You Actually Remember New Things
New experiences are also–by far–the best way to create memories. When you experience the same thing every day, it all blends together. You don’t remember which Food Network show you watched on a random Wednesday in February. A life filled with that is a never-ending continuum–a pointless clinging to pointless routine survival.
New experiences change this, because you do remember the first time you did pretty much everything you did for the first time. You remember stepping foot in Rome for the first time, or when you first saw a blue whale, or when you first accidentally farted in front of the class (not all memories are great).
No experience–no matter how awesome–really sticks with you unless there is something about it that stands out. If you skydive every day, you will eventually cease to care about or remember skydiving. It will just be another day at the falling to your death grind. It becomes the routine.
This is important because at some point, your routines become such routines that you kind of don’t have to be alive to experience them. It enables you to autopilot through life.
When you’re in your routine, you’re able to zone out, and not be present–which means for many of us, we’re not present for most of our lives, which means we’re kind of….not living. We’re just kind of…dead people who have mortgages and eat craisins.
New experiences, by definition, take you out of your routines, and stand out from everything else. You can’t zombie your way through a new experience, because you haven’t developed the habits to do so. This is why new experiences grab you by the lapel and pull you back, and force you to go, “Okay, what is happening right now? How do I respond to this?”
The more you experience new things, the more you get into the habit of approaching life this way. You learn to be present. You get in the habit of actually looking at your life, and figuring out the mess of crap right in front of you.
And that leads us to maybe the best part of new experiences:
New Experiences Prepare You For….New Experiences
A bunch of foreign shit is going to fly at your head in life. That’s happening. That’s completely inevitable.
We all know people ill-prepared for this. We all know people who are instantly uncomfortable in a new place, or a restaurant with food that’s not based around comforting white people. We all know people who can’t handle a change in address or a job, or a point of view outside their own.
These people are addicted to their routine, which is to be addicted to not living. They’re seeking to live a life that is less of an actual life. It’s like this weird daily suicide they engage in, only instead of taking a bunch of pills, or using a rope, they just watch House Hunters and stare at various instagram butts.
Chances are, this is you to some degree. In some form, it certainly is me.
We all need to suck less in this way, and this starts with routinely stepping outside of our routines. It starts with forcing ourselves into new experiences. It starts with creating the habit of seeking out the unfamiliar.
If we do this regularly, we’ll get used to unusual situations. We’ll be able to handle the foreign shit pelting us in the noggin. We’ll be better as people, because we’ll be able to respond to what we’re unsure of more successfully.
So seek out new experiences. Put some shit in your mouth that you don’t fully understand. Vaccinate yourself with outside experiences, get used to it, and for the love of God, live an actual life, so that you can get all of these benefits.
But none–and I mean none of these benefits happen for you if you approach new experiences with a checklist, Instagram mentality. If you look at your trip to Bali as an errand you have to run after which you can be satisfied and happy, you’re going to have a stupid trip to Bali.
So how do we get ourselves out of this?
How To Experience Things Without the Instagram Mindset
In order to really appreciate, and take something from new experiences, you have to be as present as fucking possible. This means no thoughts in the back of your head of, “I’m finally doing this,” (that’s a checklist perspective), no expectations that it’s as good as it seemed in that fashion blogger’s video, and no thought about how the lighting is for pictures when you’re visiting a monkey park in Japan. The more of those thoughts that seep in, the less present you’ll be, and the less valuable your experience is.
Go into new experiences open, and present. Do them because you think you specifically would love it, and not because it’s a thing a lot of girls with abs do. And most importantly…
Stop Caring
So I have a bold proposition for you. You don’t have to delete Instagram. You just have to stop giving a shit about it. Have a totally mediocre Instagram, and give absolutely zero fucks about everybody else’s. It’s a bullshit factory, and it’s irrelevant to every big picture part of life. It’s a dumbass attempt at making people admire you. You’re better than this, and I can say that because you’re not in eighth grade.
All a picture has to do is trigger a memory–not encapsulate it entirely. It can’t encapsulate a memory, and if you try to do that, you will never enjoy the thing you’re doing. So spend almost no time getting pictures the next time you do a cool thing.
Take a casual picture of the view for four seconds the next time you’re at the top of a mountain. Take a picture once you’re halfway through eating your pasta if you’ve already determined that you love it, and want to remember it a little better. Take one body progress pic, and then leave your phone in the other room. Having abs when under a very specific filter is a stupid thing to care about anyway.
Stop trying to get the perfect image of your experience to convince yourself that you’ve had a good time, and relax so that you can actually have a good time.
Go into every new experience with as clear and open of a mind as humanly possible. Seek out new experiences, but don’t worry about how many experiences you have, or how they stack up, or sure as fucking hell not how many Likes they’ll garner.
Throw any checklist of life-changing experiences–whether it’s in your head, or on an embarrassing Word document on your computer–in the toilet, and soon, maybe, your life will actually change, and you’ll get the best new experience possible: a life you actually enjoy.
