For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a finsta account.
A finsta, short for finstagram, stands for “fake Instagram,” where social media users can privately post and interact with a close circle of friends as opposed to their “main” Instagram account. The whole point is to have a more casual social media presence.
I’ll use mine as an example. I won’t outwardly expose myself, but my username is a creative play on my last name. As of right now, my profile picture is my friend and I celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. My bio is a line from the TV show “Scream Queens.” I only have 58 followers, consisting of either close friends or people from high school that I think would be too awkward to remove at this point (you know who you are).
On my finsta, I couldn’t care less about the amount of likes or comments I get. It’s simply a safe haven for me — somewhere I share my Taylor Swift song of the week or rant about my classes. I post weekly updates, filled with unfiltered snapshots of my life and an unedited caption to sum up recent events. It’s a real depiction of my life, an honest look into my mind, and a true reflection of myself.
My main Instagram account is very different. @laurennchiou obsesses over every single little detail. She meticulously color coordinates her feed and rearranges it to achieve maximum visual appeal. She agonizes over story highlight covers and her follow to following ratio. @laurennchiou is the opposite of a finsta, the antithesis of casual.
I was recently awoken to my calculated alter-ego when I decided to post on my main account last Sunday. It literally took me a week to select pictures, pick the perfect cover photo, come up with the perfect caption, and gather the confidence to even post them.
And with all due respect to myself, no one cared! No one noticed that I spent 30 minutes perfectly editing a group photo, or how my caption had two emojis instead of one.
Let me make myself clear: I’m not critiquing meticulous people like myself. I typically enjoy “curating my vibe,” constructing an image I feel comfortable sharing with a larger audience. I like controlling how I’m perceived.
Yet as I embark on the new school year, my 19th chapter of life, I can’t help but regret the time I have spent creating @laurennchiou instead of working on IRL Lauren Chiou. My grievances lie in the culture that has allowed me to become consumed with the idea of myself rather than my actual self.
Social media shouldn’t be stressful; it should just be social. It was designed to be a place where users can share parts of their lives with others, encouraging interaction and providing a platform for people to engage in meaningful connection.
In many ways, my finsta is the epitome of how social media should be used: 170 posts of pure me, documenting my life in any way I see fit. It acts as a public diary and a digital time capsule, a way to share glimpses of my college life with friends. Posting on my finsta has become a part of a weekly ritual. Every Sunday, I sort through my camera roll for pictures, videos, screenshots, and content that I feel truly encapsulates the vibe of the past week. Once compiled, I share them with my friends.
This process, popularly known as a photo dump, has taken social media by storm. Instead of carefully posed and particularly planned posts, photo dumps are a collection of photos and videos gathered together. They’re casual, including candids of friends, mirror selfies, or food pics. One may argue that photo dumps are performative in nature. But personally, I love them. Not only do they remove pressure from perfectly organizing a post, but they also allow me to look back and appreciate documented moments in my life.
When curating last week’s photo dump, I came across a screenshot of a text conversation with my old roommate, a picture of my little brother celebrating his 16th birthday, and a video of me and my friend dancing to the “Hamilton” soundtrack. Reliving those happy moments provided a temporary distraction from all of my stress and worry, and posting them on my finsta allowed others to feel the same way.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach a level of comfort where I can share these snippets of my life on my main account. But my finsta allows me to share those parts of myself with a small circle I feel comfortable sharing with. It’s those chosen disclosures that bring us closer to our most cherished connections, even if it’s through a video lip syncing “The Schyuler Sisters.”
So I implore you to look past aesthetics and make a finsta. Post as frequently or infrequently as you like. Allow yourself a space to be unplanned and unfiltered. Put the “social” back in social media.