
Looky Looky, here we are again. In the wee months to follow my unexpected Facebook account shutdown without any reason, I recently noticed now my Instagram was disabled by the app itself once again. I posted this blog with the birthdate that I created IG and once again the death. This headline showing the time I first acquired the app down to the very last day before the app was shut down without any warning to me. So once again, I didn’t post anything political or aggressive or anything inappropriate in any way shape or form. I did not bully or threaten or post nudity or do anything to violate there terms of us OR community standards. All I did was post pictures of cool cars, motorcycles and live concerts that I use to attend before Modello19. I digress…The reason I first downloaded the IG was because in the late part of 2012 I use to make random cell phone videos to send to friends that were about under a minute long. This would include motorcycle stunt videos or various comedy skits and sketches I would use from videos I had on my phone. So my biker friend Reid aka Stix, once said to me, ” Hey man, you should get an IG.” Because at that time you could upload a 30 second video into IG and edit or splice each video frame by frame until a mini edited clip was completed. This was a cool concept for a person who enjoyed brief edited movie clips. So I download the Instagram app and only ever uploaded hobbies of my life since it’s inception into my cell phone. However I felt since my IG was a public page that did not follow anyone and just posted things for me, I did not post faces in the IG app. I only had a few hundred posts, whilst never ever caring about the likes or the comments. Basically Instagram was my location to store pics and videos of my life and browse/click on other cool like minded peoples posts from time to time who pop up in my feed. That being said you don’t need to really follow anyone because your news feed will always populate things you clicked on or watched. So, as these many years of IG went on and posts and things happened I had no issues with my IG. My account stayed active like it always had and I never once ran into trouble with community standards or guidelines. That is until most recently I posted in this blog about Facebook randomly shutting down my account without reason and then shortly after this happens. Obviously we all understand that these a free services so they can do what they want. As I went through the basic prompts of trying to get my IG account back which was what I did when I lost my FB…I started to feel that familiar feeling like I once did googling how to get my FB back… the feeling like I was a tweaker trying to get my drugs and get my social media back. Suddenly I felt so free like an addict that broke through the chains of addiction. Shortly after this happened I coincidently watched a video by Jaron Lanier talking about people deleting their social media. Basically Lanier is this tech guru guy that had been there for the birth of companies like google and he created the early virtual reality platforms, so the guy is a smart dude for sure. The best way to describe this moment I am feeling is like when you are sick with some really bad illness but then the doctor gives you the medicine that actually heals the wounds in your brain stems. You start to feel it working as the detachment period goes longer from apps. You then start to give yourself different juices flowing through in a refreshing sense. I can recall slowly deleting the actual app on my phone while watching Lanier’s YouTube video. Not because I planned to delete every technological thing in my life like some weirdo in a basement covered with tin-foil on the windows. I don’t plan to hide out and never join the splendors of the Internet and other apps. I was just realizing certain things are un-needed and something needed to be altered in terms of priorities in my life. I feel great. I think the biggest thing I noticed is that losing both my FB and IG meant that I couldn’t have this false awesome or bad or indifferent life plugged into an internet app to be studied for reasons I am not told. Meaning you couldn’t view parts of my life in phones and would have to get to know me in person or possibly read my blog or watch my YouTube videos haha! Basically social media plays this give/take reward game, giving you something to look forward to every time you log in then taking away something at other times. We don’t notice it but tiny emotional triggers are being spoon feed to us with each scroll or like. Like most things addictive, social media can be fun and positive most of the time but also time consuming. After losing my accounts I think most people might have just opened up new accounts but I refuse to bow down to them. My ego overrides the brainwashing and tells me that if there is some reason the internet apps want to flush me out I should probably just stay in my lane because the universe could be helping me. Anyway, as soon as I first noticed my account was gone I followed the prompts on the IG app to attempt to recover my account and they even emailed me saying it was a mistake and they will be restoring my account yet it is still disabled last I checked. My accounts may reappear at some point or after this election madness ends but doubt I will notice after deleting the apps on my phone so I can focus on other projects. In some ways you feel like you slipped off the radar but in other ways you just feel a bit more connected to the earth. Besides, I have cool blogs and shit to post.
