real q: DOES IT GRAM??

So I’m currently drinking a Dirty Lemon Detox, which is literally just overpriced watery lemonade “infused” with charcoal, and when I think back on the long, winding journey that has led me to this point, I blame Instagram.

As there is no actual evolutionary advantage of any kind to drinking tiny pieces of rock, I attribute this beverage choice purely to the aesthetic thrill of ingesting a liquid as black as the sudden darkness & chaos of an apocalypse masquerading itself as an “eclipse.”* That is, I feel edgy af and a little like Khaleesi eating horse heart, and of course, you bet I took a fucking pic.

So this is to say, Instagram’s creeping dictum on the things we eat & places we go isn’t new news, even if you aren’t a wanna-be bougie Brooklyner tryna get those Likes, but a few standout pieces on the Internet take a really expansive look at this lil app’s effect on whole industries:

• this Eater op-ed railing against the “sad, sparkly lie” of Instagram food

• this Verge piece laying bare the lengths new restaurants are going to in order to stay picture perfect

• this Washingtonian profile of a DC food Instagrammer whose life sounds alternately dreamy & nightmarishly stressful

Tl;dr, as social platforms keep stirring the pot between publishers, readers and the content we exchange w/each other, it’s worth a sit back to acknowledge our official, all-encompassing obsession with photogenic things. Forget the whole “but does it scale?” question. It’s more like “But does it ‘gram?”

*Note: All you people who find this whole eclipse thing “fun” and “exciting” are not deploying the appropriate response for the idea of sudden, inexplicable darkness, okay?? Don’t @ me and keep your children inside, is all I’m sayin.

Like Deez Links? Forward to well-lit horse heart.