I hope you enjoyed my Instagram Video Trilogy this weekend, consisting of my first three fifteen second Instagram videos. It was quite cathartic, a personal passive-aggressive nod at how much I dislike the inclusion of video into the previously photo-only Instagram app.   Sadly, only I will truly understand my own joke.

Why am I so against it?  I know, I know.  I can shut off the auto-play of the videos in the stream.  But it has less to do with YOUR dull videos, than with my own temptation to use video for MY own nefarious purposes.

I could write you a long thesis, with quotes from famous authors such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, explaining the differences between photography and “motion pictures,” but I’d rather be as concise as possible — in my opinion, photography and video go together as well as a corned beef sandwich and mayonnaise. A photo captures a moment in time. A video is about movement in time. What strikes me as interesting as a photo — a street scene, a skyline, a person smoking a cigarette on a park bench — is not what I look for in a video.  In one swoop, Instagram ruined the gentle creative flow of the photo stream.

What am I talking about?   Why do I care so much about this shit?  Am I just weird?

Yes, I am weird.  Case in point — the completely unexpected Instagram discussion on the first video about my life-long technique of taking a shower.

lilyhollow —
Great video but one question.  Who gets into a shower without turning it on first!

neilochka —
Really, @lillyhollow? I had to fake the washing a little so the iPhone didn’t get wet, but I ALWAYS go into the shower and then turn it on. Have I been doing it wrong all my life? I adjust the temperature from inside.

elisacp —
Yes @neilochka that’s wrong 🙂 In fact I hate hotels where the door is such that you have to get in to turn it on.

Others then jumped in, calling my shower technique a “troubling one.”

Yes, I am so WEIRD that I even take my showers WRONG.

That said, I will probably delete these videos from Instagram tomorrow.  The style of humor in the videos doesn’t blend in with what I have created on Instagram during the past few years.  I have been proud of finding a place online where I can be less a personality driven narcissist — always about me, me, me  — and focus on observing the outside world, like a bystander.   It’s been a very enriching experience that I would rather not destroy.