If there’s one thing anyone should know about me, it’s that I’m chronically on Instagram. I’ve been an Instagram kid since before it was cool, and I’ve made so many extra Instagram accounts that I’ve had to resort to making spare emails for each one.
Of these, my pride and joy will always be my spam account. I love a good spam account. I’ve had at least four different ones since middle school because I’ve gotten logged out without knowing the password too many times to count. And each time, it took me less than a week before I caved and made a new one.
There aren’t many hills I’m willing to die on, but I could talk for hours about why everyone should have an Instagram spam account. In fact, I’ve already convinced several of my friends to join the club. Do you want to be next?
What’s a spam account?
A spam account is a type of secondary account that allows a person to be unfiltered. This isn’t a new concept; you might know them by another name. When I was in middle and high school, we used to call these “finstas,” which conjoined the words “fake Instagram” and was a contrast to your “rinsta” or “real Instagram.” Naturally, because these names are terrible, no one uses them anymore. Nowadays, most people call their main account their “main” and this kind of secondary account their “spam.”
These spam accounts are usually set to private mode, in contrast to the person’s main account, which could be either private or public. Often, the account username is not obviously linked to the person’s real persona.
The account will typically have far fewer followers than the person’s main, as the target audience is limited to people the user is close with. With the account set to private, you vet each request and decide if they’re someone you actually want to see that side of you.
To me, the best part of a spam account is the freedom to be truly yourself on the Internet in a way social media sites don’t really allow. I get to be incredibly silly, but this could look however you choose — the account is what you make of it.
Why should you have one?
I’ve been a longtime proponent of the “make Instagram casual again” movement that has gained popularity and inevitably died down too many times to count. The closest we seem to get is photo dumps on the main account — perfectly curated to look messy, with photos meant to look imperfect but selected with the same amount of scrutiny.
When I think about the benefits of social media, one of the main things that always comes to me is the way it fosters connection between people. I’ve formed close friendships with people I only would’ve met through social media, reconnected with people I’m no longer close with by swiping up on their stories, and even deepened relationships with friends through a constant back and forth of posts we think the other would find amusing.
To me, a spam account represents the perfect meshing of these two ideals. A casual page designed to allow the user to be their most authentic self seems like a great way to use social media as a means of connection.
What kind of content should you post?
Realistically, I can’t tell you what you should post on your future spam account. That kind of curation would defeat the whole purpose of it being something that’s authentically yours, but I can give you some suggestions based on things I’ve done or seen!
I always love a silly photo dump, especially with photos of my friends that I get to tag them in. I often recount things from my day or recap an event. Particularly notable was a carousel post of all my favorite answers from a night playing the Quiplash.
I also repost everything I find funny on the account’s story. I use the account to highlight some of my personal bits, and occasionally, I even post some of my creative work because the platform can be a safe space for me to do that without fear of judgment.
Regardless of what you decide to post, I hope you’ll consider making a spam account! I can’t think of anything better than personal social media.
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