It wasn’t unusual in the early days of Instagram to see heavily filtered sepia-tone selfies and blurry sunsets as you scrolled through your feed. However, as the app grew, these posts were (thankfully) archived and Instagram transformed the platform we know today. For years, people have worried about getting a grid-worthy shot and crafting the perfect caption, but something has changed. Recently, people have been trying to make “casual” Instagram feeds the newest trend.
The popularity of film photography Instagram accounts rose around 2018 and normalized candid photos on your feed. Every once in a while, you might see a meme in a photo thread or the caption “swipe for a surprise” followed by a candid shot placed after a perfectly posed photo. These trends narrowly veered from the typical OOTDs and #Fitspo posts. If you’ve been on Instagram at all since 2020, you’re probably familiar with the caption “photo dump.”
This trend took “casual” posting the farthest and reinvented what most people deemed Instagrammable. A “photo dump” is when people post a collection of photos, sometimes completely unrelated and mostly unedited. Popularized by influencers such as Emma Chamberlain, everyone got to posting a “quarantine dump” on their Instagrams as content during 2020. Sharing photos directly from your camera roll gives your followers a glimpse into your life by adding personality and giving one the freedom to post what you want.
Now more than ever, people want to share what they believe in, how they feel, and what they support on their feeds. This trend has made people care a lot less about the timing of when they post or the quality picture and more about the enjoyment of the content they post. If posting your view or what you ate for lunch makes you happy, I say do it. I definitely think that there is hope in making our feeds more candid and less filtered.
Our feeds are home to major brands, influencers, our aunt that just discovered hashtags, and so much more. There are so many people that share this space that would need to be changed in making the platform casual. Although the spirit is there for many Instagram users, the movement has not made much of a budge on the mainstream platform. Among the new shopping features and stories, there is a long way to go until Instagram is “casual” but it’s moving in the right direction.