Over the last month or so I’ve started to read more on micro.blog, follow links to articles, slowly trying to get me out of the habit of doomscrolling YouTube or always numbing my mind with a podcast. I’ve been away from regular RSS based reading for quite a while and I desperately need to look over my subscription list in NetNewsWire to get more reading material that way, but I’ve at least started checking the inbox there every now and then. I’ve also spent more time reading the columns posted by Seconds Wind on Patreon. Finally, I read my local paper every morning. All in all, I’m trying to get away from ”consuming content” and get more into actually reading (or for that matter watching) things that I can then think about and that gives me anything other than a simple distraction. It’s a bumpy ride, and particularly my habit of always having something playing in my ears are a hard one to break. It’s also really easy to fall back into the YouTube hole. Due to this, a few days ago I reinstalled Instapaper on my devices.

I used to love Instapaper and I can find posts on my blog as old as June 2010 praising it but some years ago I just fell out the habit of using it. There was never a ”f* this app, I’m out” moment with Instapaper. I just started putting fewer and fewer articles into it, and started using it less and less. Eventually I started uninstalling it because is was never every used. Now, I feel a strong need for it again. If I get back into the habit of putting things I don’t have the time to properly read right now into Instapaper, and then get back into reading rather than consuming when I have the time I’m pretty sure I’ll be a happier person. There is no joy in the consumption, though sometimes it has been a necessity to hide from the lack of joy in the bigger picture of life. Iv’e not had the time to use it much yes, but it appears to be exactly the same app that it used to be. It’s easy to save articles to it, the reading experience is nice and free of distractions. Sure, it hasn’t evolved at all but why would it need to do that?

Yesterday I also reinstalled Instagram. This was for a quick one-off thing, but once it was on my devices I figured I should try it a bit. I was quite an early adopter of Instagram and I really enjoyed it for a few years. It its case there was a clearer feeling of ”all right, I’m out” some years ago. I realized that I didn’t get any joy from browsing either my timeline or recommendations. At best, I saw interesting things that I wasn’t part of and got strong FOMO, at worst I just got irritated by the stupid things I saw. So I intentionally uninstalled it and refused any impulse to reinstall. Occasionally I’ve followed a link on the web to a profile or post on instagram but as the years have gone by the web experience of it has gone from terrible to horrible. Instagram has always hated the open web and these days I don’t even understand why it pretends to be accessible that way when all it does is try to coerce me into getting the app.

So how was the experience of using Instagram the app again? Well, it was terrible. Not in the way that the web interface is, but in what it showed me. There where som posts by the people I followed but it was also riddled with ads, payed for posts and ”recommended posts”. Once I had scrolled through what my friends had posted for the past three days it was only promoted posts and ads. I then tried to look at the discover posts (or whatever it’s called) and was met with more or less nothing but AI slop and half-naked butts by ”genetically gifted” people. Thanks but no thanks. Uninstalled.

In the end, here we have two apps, both being ”Insta” something. Both appealed to me a great deal when they were new. One of them is largely still the same, one has changed a whole lot. Sure, progress is nice when it comes to the big things in the world, but being the same old, boring thing is probably a good thing when it comes to apps and services that is already good.