I Hate Reels for ruining everything
Reels have made all of instagram just so disheartening. I’m not one to care a whole lot about reach/engagement/followers, but it’s really taking a toll when you see that you’re getting maybe 20% of what you normally get because you don’t post reels. I’ve made a few in the past, and they’re all just top down videos of me working on some knitting with some relaxing music, but I also don’t want to post working on the same project for 10 reels just to have the algorithm cut me some slack.
So REELS HAVE RUINED EVERYTHING (understand)
Reasons I Hate Instagram Reels so much because:
1. Reels as a huge part of algorithm
I feel bad for these designers who rely on social media for income, because when they introduced reels on Instagram, they made it a huge part of the algorithm to get your content shown to people. If you don’t make multiple reels per week, your engagement will diminish. It sucks.
2. I Hate Influencer’s Craft Comedy
I absolutely HATE craft comedy (that’s what I call it) It is taking over. I don’t think the issue is short videos, it’s the lazy, rehashed content. People can make really informative or interesting short video craft content. I have a knitting Tik tok, which I started because I didn’t want to make another YouTube knitting podcast, but I still wanted to share my projects in video form. I get so frustrated when I see the same “oh no I spent too much on yarn and have to hide it from my S.O.” joke over and over. It’s feels even lazier in reels.
3. Dance Monkey Dance
I’m an illustrator by day and reels make me so sad. My work is static by nature, and so many of us feel forced into this *dance monkey dance!* thing that is happening on social across many industries. I won’t do process videos because they interfere with my day, and they’re a pain in the butt to edit (for me). I think a lot of people feel forced into it and don’t see any other way to thrive on the internet. I also dislike the reels but theres a part of me that feels badly for creators because I get the feeling they think there’s no other way.
I also feel like a lot of knitting IG reels are inside jokes about buying too much yarn, which I am desperately trying not to do. So I’ve had to unfollow so many people :/ I know its a thing but I don’t want to be tempted into overbuying yarn again.
4. Sort of jealous
During the pandemic i unfollowed all the people who were going on fun vacations to crowded places and eating out all the time because they were doing something I desperately wanted to do but felt it was unsafe to do and it made me crazy. Like, I don’t care what you do really but I also don’t want to watch.
5. Can’t see reels without sound
I typically don’t have sounds on when I’m scrolling, so half of the videos are absolutely uninterpretable. Those that have captions I’m a little more tolerable of, but overall, I’d rather see time-lapses, brief tutorials, or a spin-through of some of their designs over the memes. I think Meta is trying to keep a hold of the market they came up on, and many individuals have shifted to TikTok, so they feel they have to do that to compete. Y’know, rather than doing what it used to do well – galleries of images. It is quite frustrating, because I have a few folks I have loved following, but likely will unfollow soon if it’s only videos they post (partially because of accessibility reasons too, not just my annoyance.)
Why can’t we just have an app left with still images and captions. I don’t mind some higher quality reels but the ones that hop on the TikTok trends are getting irritating.
I loved Tik Tok, and it holds a different place in my consciousness than Instagram. I go to IG to look at photos posted by creators who are familiar to me and whose work I like. It is so annoying that all I’m seeing there is videos by creators who are unknown to me.
Also, I don’t know if it’s the software itself or the way I’ve trained it, but TikTok was much better at showing me new stuff that I actually want to see. IG maximum of the time just shows me basic models making pretty, boring stuff.