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One of the biggest myths in modern dating is that our dating pool is something that just happens to us. As if it’s this uncontrollable force we’re trapped inside, filled with chaos, disappointment, and people who don’t meet our standards. In reality, your dating pool is something you actively curate.

Every single one of us has lines. Some are hard, some are soft, and some are honestly just concepts we picked up from TikTok and never questioned. “He has to be 6’5 with a 6 figure salery, blonde, a doctor in a specific practice, who doesn’t have social media and has never met another woman in his life.”

A hard line is a true deal breaker. A soft line is a preference. The problem is that many people treat every preference like a moral boundary, and then wonder why their dating pool feels microscopic. It’s hard to have to push through brunch with a friend who constantly complains about not meeting anyone, when the restrictions that she herself has set are harder to meet than getting into an Ivy League school.

An example of a soft line: I may not prefer someone with long hair. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t date someone with long hair. That’s a soft line. Dating someone who vapes or doesn’t take care of themselves? Hard line. No amount of chemistry, charm, or witty banter is going to override that for me. Knowing the difference is going to make or break your dating experience.

Modern dating exposes us to an unprecedented amount of choice. Apps, social media, and constant access to new people. It can feel overwhelming. But instead of using that abundance to meet more humans and gather more data (which, by the way, will help you discover your hard and soft lines), many people are using it to hunt for a very specific unicorn. Someone who checks every box, triggers no discomfort, fits neatly into a fantasy, and requires zero flexibility. And shockingly, that person is hard to find. In some cases, impossible.

So we’re left with a decision: do you want a large dating pool with flexible preferences, or a very small pool defined by rigid criteria? Neither is wrong, and I’d never tell someone to settle. But you don’t get to choose extremely hard lines and complain about scarcity. If your standards are narrow, your options will be too. That’s not a failure of dating culture; that’s basic math.

A lot of people say modern dating is miserable. I hear it constantly. That it’s exhausting, confusing, and demoralizing. And sure, dating has changed, but the thing that has stayed the same is that people fucking hate it. Dating has always been awkward, vulnerable, and occasionally horrible. The difference now is that we’re treating every date like a verdict on our future instead of what it actually is: two people seeing if they enjoy each other’s company.

When dating feels miserable, it’s often because the stakes are too high and the rules are too rigid. If every date is being evaluated against an internal checklist instead of experienced as an interaction, of course it’s going to feel joyless. You’re not meeting a person, you’re auditing them. You’re interviewing them for a job they haven’t even decided they want yet.

Some of the best connections happen when we allow ourselves to be surprised. I’ve gone on dates with men who didn’t fit my usual physical preferences, and my time with them are extremely fond memories. When we soften where we can and hold firm where it truly matters, when we stop confusing “not my usual type” with “not right for me,” we open ourselves up to what could be a truly beautiful connection. Attraction isn’t always instant. Sometimes it shows up in someone’s laugh, how their eyes crinkle when they smile, their taste in art, the way they make you feel seen and heard. And if you’re unwilling to let any of that count, you’re opting out of a lot of genuinely good matches.

This isn’t an argument for abandoning standards. I have my own that people on the internet love to tell me are unreasonable, but for me are hard lines. (Tall, ambitious, physically active, but enjoys a drink with me every so often.) It’s an argument for defining your hard lines intentionally. Question your soft ones honestly. And accept that every choice you make shapes the size and quality of your dating pool.

Dating is supposed to be fun. Meeting people is supposed to be interesting. Being single isn’t a punishment; it’s a season of your life that you should find the enjoyment in. And if you’re consistently having a terrible time, it might be worth asking: is dating actually the problem, or am I expecting the moon?

Clarify your boundaries, soften the preferences you can, and allow room for real humans to exist.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of horrible dating experiences. One time, a guy showed up 5 inches shorter than he’d claimed, was very clearly stoned out of his mind, and was rude to the waiter for not being fast enough. (We’d literally just sat down.) Another time, I went to the bathroom and left my bag in my seat. When I came back, the tab was paid for. I said, “Oh, you paid? Thanks so much!” and he proceeded to tell me that he’d paid with MY card. The man had rummaged through my purse, found my wallet, and used my debit card to pay for our drinks.

These experiences are objectively awful, but they’re also objectively hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, I never spoke to either of those men ever again, but my life is better for having those stories to tell. I could absolutely have let my negative experiences color my opinion of dating as a whole, but I didn’t. Dating isn’t the problem: our perspective is.

Too many of us are going into the dating world with strict criteria and even stricter expectations. “He has to make this much money, be this tall, can’t be blonde, not too close with his family, but has to have a good relationship with them, can’t be younger than me, can’t drive a Tesla” … Several of those are valid, but I won’t be saying which. And for some of y’all who are marriage-minded, it seems like you consider the date a waste if it doesn’t end in a proposal.

I have found the most success in dating when I went in with zero expectations. My one and only goal was to have a good time. Sometimes I met that goal, other times it was a wash. I certainly do have physical preferences, and some I’m not willing to budge on, but I also went out with people I wouldn’t normally consider “my type” and found the connection to be wonderful. Sometimes you need to see a person’s mannerisms, watch their face break into a smile, and listen to their laugh to find them attractive, and those of you absolutely unwilling to budge on ANY of your physical preferences are missing out on genuinely good matches.

If you find my attitude towards dating to be too casual, you’re allowed to think that. But I met my boyfriend when I was going on 1-2 first dates a week with zero expectations, and now I’m at his family’s house in Sacramento, cuddling with the family dog on my chest. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and click with the first person you go out with, but if you truly want to find someone, you have to meet a LOT of people. Enjoy the ride! Being single is fun. Dating is fun. And being in love is fun. If you’re having a miserable time, my challenge to you is to ask yourself if dating is the problem, or if your perspective is the problem.

I have a friend who is “never have to work a day in her life” type stunning (though she actually does work quite hard). She has a medium-sized social media platform and uses Instagram the way it’s been designed for the past decade, by which I mean she posts exclusively aesthetic content. When her management realized that TikTok was becoming more necessary for their clients’ brands, they pushed her to start filming video content.

The problem was, she hated the platform. It didn’t resonate with her, so she didn’t use it. Instead, her management would send her homework with trending sounds to lip sync to, or they’d just repost her aesthetic Reels. The trending sounds they sent her were weeks late, and TikTok doesn’t value quick aesthetic posing videos the way Instagram does. Her content was flopping almost every time, and every time she’d text me and ask why. It’s hard to tell someone to their face that the content is bad for the platform, but that’s what I did.

She needed to rework the content, be more on top of trends, incorporate more of her personality, and post more consistently. She was posting every week / two weeks, and the algorithm considered her account inactive. When I laid it all out in front of her, she actually chose to quit TikTok. She hasn’t posted a single time since.

I see posts on my FYP every single day complaining that they can’t get out of 300-view jail, and then I look at their page and they have the longest millennial pause I’ve ever seen at the front of their video. Those critical 3 seconds we have to catch someone’s attention have already been spent watching you take an extra-long inhale before you start talking. This same person is crying shadow ban, when in reality the information in your video might have been good; people just couldn’t get past your poor editing to see it.

Here are a handful of tips to improve the likelihood that the algorithm is going to favor your account:

Choose your editing style

You have two options for editing style. You can choose to film the entire thing in one straight go, but if you do this, the pacing of the video has to be perfect. Start talking the second the camera rolls and don’t stop until the message or story is completely finished. This style of editing works extremely well for some people because the lack of cuts adds to the authenticity of the video. However, it leaves very little room for mistakes. One stumble over your words isn’t a big deal, but if it keeps happening, you should probably start over. Viewers get bored quickly, and pausing to think or correct yourself is going to earn you a scroll.

The other option is what I do, which is to stop and start my video every few sentences. This way, I can avoid mistakes and cut the content close together to remove any unnecessary breaths or pauses. This creates a “snappier” style of content. Example here:

Engage like a real person

If you’re liking your own content or going on an alt account to give yourself your first like, you’re hurting your content’s potential performance. This will trigger the algorithm to flag you as “forced engagement”. It weakens what TikTok calls your “authenticity score” and limits your overall reach.

Similarly, you have to actually use the platform. Like the story about my Influencer friend I told earlier, she didn’t use the platform she was posting on. She had no idea what was relevant and what wasn’t, and beyond that, scrolling silently trains your algorithm to ignore you. It takes into account what you’re liking, watching multiple times, etc. It notices if you’re not engaging with anyone else, and will not push your content because it considers you a silent viewer. Like, comment, and save people’s posts. Even if it’s just something you do for a few minutes a day, it’s good to see what the culture shift is (because they’re constant on TikTok) and tell the platform you still exist.

Post every day

I know this is not easy or realistic for some people. I’m a mom with a day job who also likes to stay active. I know how hard it is. It won’t always be achievable, but it should be the goal. In weeks that I go 3-4 days without posting, it takes weeks to recover from. Not just because I’m trying to gain traction again, but also because I’m a little out of touch. Social media moves quickly, and the plans for videos I had may at this point be irrelevant. A recap of Love is Blind may not be as successful this week as it was last week when new episodes aired.

When you’re in a period of not being able to create and you’re out of drafts, here’s my big tip: Repost. Take your old high-performing content and absolutely spam that shit. I’ve had certain videos go viral 3-4 times a year+ later. I might get a handful of “haven’t I already seen this before?” comments, but the vast majority are new viewers and new potential followers. I posted a year-old video yesterday with an old haircut and half a dozen fewer tattoos, and it got 100k views within the day.

You have to figure out what makes the creation process sustainable for you, and sometimes that means dealing with the small embarrassment of someone noticing you reposted.

As someone who studies modern-day dating culture as a casual hobby, my statement that I am not willing to provide unconditional love to a romantic partner may be jarring to most of you. I’m an avid fan of shows like Love Is Blind, I’m in the “Are we dating the same guy” Facebook groups, I have the Tea app, I love hearing other people’s opinions on the subject of love. But the thing I hear most consistently is people’s need to find someone who will love them through anything, and I’ve never been able to relate to that.

And it’s not because I can’t fathom what it feels like. I have had the type of love that the women in my dating groups are pining for, and I resented it because it was constantly used against me.

During that relationship, I was up at 6-7 am every day. I cleaned the house, took care of our child, worked on my business, made healthy meals for the house, kept the home organized, prioritized my health, and hosted frequently for our friends and family. He slept in, did none of the housework, had to be asked to do anything, took a backseat with caring for our son, and was actively ruining his physical health. When I would bring up that all of these things, including the fact that he was ruining his health at 40 years old, were making me no longer attracted to him, the answer was always the same.

“I would love you through anything.”

He wasn’t lying; he truly would have loved me through anything. Regardless of weight gain, or if I suddenly stopped taking care of the house, or if I stopped organizing events for his family and making sure our son had properly fitting clothes and was bathed regularly, he would love me.

It took me a long time to understand why it bothered me so much. I realized, eventually, that the reason he would still love me if I stopped trying so hard and doing so much is because he didn’t care that I was doing any of it. If I had suddenly stopped one day, not only would he not care, he wouldn’t have noticed. So the years of time and effort I put into this life and this relationship and this home seemed suddenly completely meaningless.

He would love me through anything, and I could not love him through his laziness and indifference, and I felt like it made me a bad person. I had this thing that women everywhere yearn for, a man who would stick with them no matter what, and I felt like I was settling. Actually, I knew I was settling. But I would talk to my friends about leaving, and inevitably, the conversation would always come down to them saying, “But he loves you so much.”

It was a difference in core values. And who knows, maybe those values do make me a bad person. I know that I would love my partner through illness, but I can’t if that illness is a product of drinking their life away. I will love my partner through age, but I need someone who wants to take care of themselves so we can truly enjoy our golden years together.

The relationship I’m in now makes me uncomfortable, which is what I want. I know that if I woke up tomorrow and stopped providing what I do, stopped pushing myself to be better, he would leave me. And that’s a hard reality check after having experienced someone who wouldn’t, but it also means he values what I do. I try extremely hard in my relationships, whether romantic or platonic, and for the first time, I feel like my efforts are both noticed and appreciated.

Unconditional love to me feels weaponized. You should always feel confident in your ability to leave someone. Even if you’re happy, even if it’s not abusive or toxic, you can leave. I feel like this concept of having to strive for unconditional love is our way of ensuring that no one can ever leave us, and if they do, that makes them a piece of shit.

If you don’t have kids with someone, leave because it’s a Tuesday.

The Long Walk was my favorite book when I was 14. An odd age to be reading about children getting brutally gunned down, perhaps, but I was an odd kid. I read that story multiple times because I loved the connection between the characters, how well Stephen King described the slow descent into madness, and the underlying themes. It’s a graphic, gut-wrenching, wonderful read, and I was the most excited I’ve been since season two of Arcane dropped for a piece of media.

For 50% of the movie, I was thrilled. Casting was wonderful; they were nailing the tone of pure dread that permeated the book, and the reality of what it would be like to walk nonstop. It didn’t shy away from what we often ask in other movies, like, “What on earth do they do when they have to go to the bathroom?” It showed it, and it was gross, and I respected it.

I remember sitting in the theater and genuinely appreciating that the movie was letting people use their brains. The themes of being stuck in a capitalist society were there. Of how it feels to enter a rat race you didn’t have any choice but to sign up for. Of what the loss of free speech and censorship can do to a society.

And then it got heavy-handed. Our two main characters point to a poor family on the side of the road, and Ray expresses his hatred for the spectators watching them suffer. Pete says he shouldn’t hate them; they’re doing what they have to do to survive like everyone else. And that was obvious, but I understood the choice.

Cut to a flashback where Ray’s father is killed by the Major for showing Ray banned books, music, and art. His father refuses to say that what he did was wrong and that Ray needed to be true to himself, right as the gun goes off. It was so corny and cheesy and did not fit the tone of the rest of the movie. It was giving Farehheit 451, not The Long Walk.

And finally, as we get to the end, I see they changed the winner. And that’s fine, Ray winning was never really the point of the book. Ray keeps walking, because you can’t opt out of capitalism. There is no winning; you have to keep trudging even as everyone you know has fallen behind. So Pete winning didn’t bother me.

The fireworks blasting as people sang America the Beautiful bothered me. Pete taking a gun and doing what he discouraged Ray from doing for the entire movie, bothered me. Not because I disagree with the messaging, but because it was assuming the audience wouldn’t get it. How are we going to keep complaining that the new generation lacks critical thinking skills when we refuse to challenge them?

I walked out of the theater frustrated for my 14-year-old self, who was able to understand the book’s themes perfectly well, and frustrated by the new generations’ lack of access to media that encourages their media literacy.

Modern media is assuming that we’re fucking stupid, and I don’t appreciate it.

I’ve had an Instagram account for over ten years, and have been at 50,000 followers for at least the past four. For whatever reason, Instagram hates that account. When Reels came out for everyone else, it took my account a year to get access to it. I’ve randomly lost monetization, I couldn’t do collab posts, basically any function that would allow the account to grow was not available to me.

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I met my fiancé when I was 19, and he was 32. I had literally just fled an abusive relationship, and a person I’d met online a year prior had an empty room he was willing to let me use while I got back on my feet. My roommate was in his 30s, and as one could surmise, the friends he had around were in that same age group.

My fiancé would come over on the weekends. We’d play video games together, drink together, and one night on a McDonald’s run, he said, “Ah, fuck it," and leaned over to the passenger side and kissed me.

I was 19, and by that point, I had not had a good life. The daughter of two alcoholics, I had raised myself and my siblings. I had suffered abuse, neglect and was actively dealing with depression. To him, this made me seem mature. He said I had more life experience than he did, that we were basically on even footing. He said the women his age were too driven, too focused on careers and money, they weren’t “fun”.

What I know now, at the same age he was when he met me, is that I was a normal 19-year-old girl. I wasn’t any more mature than anyone else my age; I was traumatized.

By the time I was reaching my mid-twenties, it was starting to occur to me what position I’d gotten myself into. My fiancé was a nice man, charismatic and funny, but he was lazy and dismissive. I lived with him and his best friend, whom he’d lived with for over 10 years, and I was the only one cleaning. The only one cooking. The only one taking care of the dog. The two grown men I was living with were binge drinking every night, and I was cleaning after them every morning.

My love for my fiancé was waning hard and fast, and so was my attraction to him. I decided I needed to figure out a way to leave, but I didn’t know how, given that I had no employable skills and he was financially in control. The time other people my age spent in college or working to build their resume, I was busy playing wife to a man 10+ years my senior.

I had nowhere to go and no money, and now I was pregnant.

I stayed. Where was I supposed to go? I left my mother’s house at 15 because of domestic violence. I left my father’s house at 17 because of neglect and his choosing a woman over his kids. I was 24 and a new mom, and I needed support. When I told friends I was unhappy, they pointed out that the man I was with was nice. He didn’t hit me. He was there. And wasn’t that enough?

If I thought the burden I was carrying before was heavy, it was infinitely heavier now. I bled for months past when you’re supposed to after I gave birth, because I couldn’t rest when the baby was resting. The house was filthy, there were bottles and wrappers everywhere from my fiance’s binges, the dog needed to be walked, meals needed to be cooked, the baby’s things needed to be sanitized, and who was going to do it? It wasn’t my child’s father, who was sleeping in until noon every day.

When my son was nearly two, I had had enough. I was burnt out, miserable, and long since had fallen out of love. Physical touch with him had become self-harm. I was going to leave again, and I did leave.

For 8 brief months, I was out. During those 8 months, he went to therapy. He stopped drinking. He pursued me like any random interested man would pursue me. I dodged everything, the gifts, the grand gestures, the promises, until March of 2020, when two things happened.

First, Los Angeles, my home, locked down for COVID. Some states barely reacted to the pandemic, but LA closed completely. If I wanted to co-parent effectively, we needed to form a “pod”. The second thing that hit us even harder than the pandemic was our son’s autism diagnosis. At nearly 3, he wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t making eye contact. He was behind on all of his milestones. And the only two people in the world who understood our son and his experience were the two of us.

So once again, I stayed. I didn’t leave that pod we formed in 2020 for another 4 years. After the first year of us reuniting, he began drinking again. For the next couple of years, I would ask him, “Please just show me you can go three days without it. I grew up with alcoholics; I can’t be with an alcoholic.”

But he would say, “I have ADHD. This is where I get my dopamine. I work all day, I want to unwind. My friends drink more than I do, and they’re not alcoholics.” He never went three days without. And his friends were, in fact, alcoholics.

For the last year of our relationship, we both knew it was ending. We talked about it ad nauseam. I couldn’t make myself have a physical relationship with him anymore, which was his last straw. Mine was everything else. During one of our several hour-long conversations about what wasn’t working, I said, “You chose me at 32, as an adult. I chose you as a child, and you are not who I would choose now.”

The next morning, I woke up to a text (yes, a text) saying he accepted that he was not my person. I texted back, “I agree”, and that was that.

There are more details I won’t bore you with. How we split the home we were both on the title of, working out custody with a child with level 3 autism who is unlikely to ever live on his own. The separation of friends and family that had been intertwined for nearly 12 years. And while I was grappling with the fact that I was 30+ years old at square one, he was dealing with the fact that he was alone in his mid-forties. That he was older, hadn’t taken care of himself, and now had to find someone who was okay with him being a special needs parent. I wasn’t the only one our age gap relationship affected; it had long-term ramifications for him as well.

But I think what matters is that we did work out the details. He eventually took over the house. I asked my father for money for the first time in my adult life, and he helped me get my little apartment.

I love my apartment. It’s splotless, everything is pink, and I bake all the time. I always have fresh flowers, and I have two cats. I spend an hour in the apartment’s gym every morning, and I’ve lost 20lbs. I have 50/50 custody of my son, and while his father and I aren’t friends, we are wonderful coparents. Our son is our priority, and we also look out for each other’s mental health. If one parent is becoming overwhelmed, the other takes over.

And I met someone that I would choose as an adult. He’s driven, passionate, focused on his health, generous to the people around him, loves fiercely, and goes out of his way for me. It feels so different to have made a mature choice in my love life, as opposed to suffering the one I made as a child.

I am the happiest I’ve been in a decade, but it took too long to get here. When I see young women with a similar age gap to mine touting how wonderful it is, my heart sinks.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and there’s no way to know at 17-20 what your perspective will be at 30+. I know that there are exceptions, that it has worked for some people, but the damage age gaps cause is undeniable. You will never be on even playing field with your partner. The power dynamic is an inherent fact in your relationship. So please, take a lesson from someone who lived it. There is a reason they’re not dating someone their own age. An adult woman would not put up with what I did, because they know better.

A Beginner’s Guide to TikTok SEO

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I stole from my mother. One day, when I was in my early twenties, I went plant shopping with my mother at Home Depot. She knew what we were looking for, but the thing I stole was not her green thumb, so I was no help. She stopped an employee and, without missing a beat, seamlessly wove the employee into our conversation using the name on his nametag. Instead of “Hi, can you help me find ___,” she said, “Oh it’s so nice to see you John, will you come along with us to find the ficus’s?” For the few minutes it took us to find whatever plant she was looking for, the Home Depot employee wasn’t a stranger; he was her friend.

I wanted it, so I took it. Strangers are now my friends.

I stole from my child’s godmother. My son’s godmother, Lori, is a powerful woman. She’s educated, a successful lawyer turned successful real estate agent. Beautiful, elegant, and genuinely charming. She’s the type of person who has never had to try to make friends; people flock to her. Being her friend is a status symbol. While this type of attention can often create a mean girl, Lori is anything but.

When my son was around 8 months old, I had next to no support. I had never expressed to her how underwater I was, but she could tell. She invited me to her family’s home for Mother’s Day and spent the day with me. I brought her a small gift, I couldn’t afford much, and as she opened it, her face lit up and she said, “Thank you angel.” I realized then that this person with so many people in her atmosphere could make you feel like you were the only person in the world. That when her eyes were on you, they were only on you.

I wanted to make people feel that way, so I took it. I give people my undivided attention.

I stole from my ex-best friend. My ex-friend is an aspiring actress, and she is as kind as she is beautiful. I’ve had incredible luck in my life; the beautiful people I’ve known have been gorgeous from the inside out. When it came to Elsa, I had to take the good and leave the bad. The ‘good’ was her unending generosity. Elsa did not do things for you because she expected anything back. She’d housesit while you were gone for the weekend and leave the food you bought her untouched and the money you left her unspent. She made a cake for every single birthday event she went to, even if she’d only met the person once, and in some cases, she hadn’t met them yet at all. An acquaintance of hers was gone for a month for an acting gig, and once a week, she drove an hour to move his car so he wouldn’t get a parking ticket.

The ‘bad’ that I had to leave behind was the lack of boundaries. She is the type to put on someone else’s mask before she puts on her own in a plane crash, and while that’s admirable, it’s not sustainable. I watched her burn out from her generosity often.

I stole the good part from my ex-best friend. I am generous with no expectation of any return, and no expectation of a thank you. I do for people because I enjoy it and it makes me happy, but I am generous with the caveat of boundaries. I will put on my mask first, but I will also choose generosity even when the risk is vulnerability.

I stole from my father. My father is a difficult man. He is not easy to get along with, and we have struggled for decades to get our feet under us and find common ground. He had a hard upbringing with no money, half a dozen siblings, an absent father, and an addict mother. I’m sure you can ascertain that the culmination of these issues has created a tough exterior. But the wonderful thing about my father is that he’s direct. For being as tough as he is, he is one of the most securely attached people I know. If there is an issue, he simply tells you that there’s an issue. He has hard and firm rules that he will explain upfront, and then it’s up to you whether or not you break those rules.

My dad will lend anyone $100, with the understanding that if you do not pay back that $100, consider it a gift, but you’ll never see another penny from him. If you’re more than 15 minutes late when he’s picking you up, he will tell you beforehand that if you pass that 15-minute mark, you’re going to need to find a new ride because he’s leaving.

In a world of anxious and avoidant attachments, of people who will ghost you to avoid having to confront you, my father is a breath of fresh air.

He doesn’t know it, but he showed me how to set boundaries. Perhaps not as strict as his, but just as firm. I don’t fear confrontation because I stole it from my father. I am generous, I am charming, and I am friendly, but because of him, I am not a doormat.

In summary, no personality? No problem! Have you considered… theft?

Step One: Be Consistent

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Like many creators in the social media space, I got my start on Instagram. Myspace created the ball, Facebook got the ball rolling, but it was really Instagram that got the ball to its goal. The influencer market as we know it would not exist without Instagram, for better or worse. Before I get into the utter dumpster fire the social media platform has turned into, I want to give credit where credit is due. Instagram pivoted social media culture in remarkable ways. Paris Hilton and people like her created what we now know to be influencers, but Instagram made the lifestyle accessible.

Which is why it’s so disappointing to see how they treat their creators and user base. When they implemented an algorithm instead of showing us posts from the users we follow chronologically, we outcried. When every third post became an ad, we outcried. And when the platform decided to copy Tiktok and tanked any account that still primarily posted still images (which, if you recall, is the foundation of the platform) we outcried.

Instagram doesn't give a shit.

Does Instagram Value Its Users? Naw Dawg

Ignoring the lack of general ethics Meta is displaying lately, let’s talk about how they treat their creators and businesses on the platform. I have the unique perspective of having a business account for my cosmetics company, as well as my personal page, which is a creator account with about 50K followers.

On my business page, if I’m not running ads, my posts do not get traction. It’s gotten to the point where doing beautiful product shoots and paying influencers to create UGC (user generated content) for me is no longer a strategy that works. I’m sinking money if I don’t also please the Meta Gods by paying them to show my hard work to my existing followers. My business page has around 20k followers, and it will get a good 20 likes per cultivated post, which is exactly why people moved from Facebook to Instagram originally. They hated having to pay Facebook to show the followers they already had their posts, and Instagram is doing the exact same thing.

On the creator side, the ONLY reason creators started doing reels was because they were being incentivized. Instagram started by suppressing our still images. Giant creators who had been posting their still images for years started to see a 50% decrease in their engagement rate, forcing them to try their hand at video content even if they weren’t comfortable with it. And that wasn’t ultimately enough, so Meta rolled out their bonus program.

This is when I personally started posting to reels. I’d long since given up on my posts performing, and my aesthetic content didn’t translate to video without a significantly larger amount of effort, which I wasn’t ready to commit to. Turns out I also have a child, a partner, and a day job. But once reels started actually paying, it was worth my time. Over the course of posting on reels, I’ve probably made around 10 grand, which is more than most and less than some. Getting around 6 million views would garner me maybe $500 a month, so anyone who wanted to make a living wage off of being on Instagram would have to either be spending ALL of their time making content or also doing a lot of brand deals.

However, in more recent months, the bonus program has become more competitive and less lucrative. They're scouring your page in search of something that might go against their vague terms of service so that they can remove your account from accessing bonuses because they don’t actually want to pay you. My account was taken off due to a several-year-old photo of me holding an alcoholic beverage.

When Meta expected TikTok to be banned, they “paused” the bonus program altogether. Creators were not notified about this change, and many creators depended on this money. I made about $200-$500 monthly and relied on it as supplemental income. Meta said that they were pausing bonuses to “improve their monetization”, but it seemed like very odd timing that they implemented this change once they knew they wouldn't have to compete with TikTok's monetary incentive. Now that monetization is somewhat back, I would hardly say that it’s improved. They’re paying a fraction of a penny on views and doing everything in their power to suspend your accounts’ monetization.

So to summarize, Instagram is bullshit, and it shouldn't be your primary focus when trying to grow your platform.

You’re sitting at your desk in middle school, and your friend and sometimes bully is sitting next to you and whispers something vulgar in your ear. You’ve never heard the word before, but you know by your friend and bullies' mocking tone that it is bad, and you should know this. Your cheeks tint as she snickers and asks, “Do you know what that means?”

You don’t, and you’re embarrassed and ashamed at the simple fact of not knowing. You learned in those moments that to say, “I don’t know,” is wrong. It becomes an inherent truth. Everyone else gets it, and you don’t, and that’s wrong.

We carry this sense of shame into adulthood. Instead of approaching life with a sense of curiosity, we layer ourselves in the protection of pretending. When a peer or superior says something new to us, expecting us to follow along, we nod. We look for context clues to help aid us in the conversation instead of, god forbid, admitting that we’re not following.

And in these moments, it becomes clear that a few small instances of shame when your brain was far from being fully formed have become a lifelong fear of looking stupid.

My entire life changed when I started saying those three little words. When my curiosity became larger than my fear, and I started saying, “I don’t know”, I began connecting with people in a way I never had before. I’m introverted by nature, and I was the type of person in a conversation who was waiting to speak. Not because I had something interesting to say, but because I was so fearful of saying the wrong thing that I spent the entire time they were talking trying to form the perfect response.

The problem with this is that people can see it. They can tell that you’re not really hearing them. By trying to keep my poor social habits flying under the radar, I was actively, blatantly obvious and off-putting to the people I was genuinely trying to be friends with. I was a woman in my early to mid twenties without a single clue on how to connect with other humans.

The thing that I was critically lacking was curiosity.

Feeling comfortable in not knowing. Tapping into that once squashed childlike wonder.

People love to share what they know, and they want you to ask about it. Your nephew with his Pokemon card collection wants nothing more than to explain which cards are rare and why. You may never purchase a pokemon card in your life, but watching the light appear in his eyes as he tells you about his passion for his collection is a gift. Your day trader friend is waiting with bated breath for someone to ask him about stocks, because no one cares about stocks, and while it may not be completely curated to your area of interest, you might learn something significant about investing. Then months later, at a party when the topic comes up, you’ll find that you do actually know a thing or two about day trading.

We are all teachers and students, and we want to be heard.