Instagram



There's a killer scene in Gladiator where Russell Crowe looks into the middle-distance as his macho gravelly voice reverberates over the fields of barley, and he coins the immortal phrase...



'Rome wasn't built in a day'






At the weekend, dropthebeatonit managed to join instagram using nothing but a laptop and a nokia that was last seen in shops around the year 1984. And i made that shit happen in less than a day



Big deal motherfucker comes the chorus from the hypnotic glowing interfaces. Instagram has been around for almost a decade, get the net. Well as it turns out instagram is a smartphone only application. 



You don't see this guy noncing around on his laptop do you. 






No. His laptop has been rendered obsolete, blurred into the background behind a pot-plant as he casually signs into instagram from a smartphone, mulling over an exploratory spoonful of a delicious-looking strawberry shortcake parfait pierced with a white chocolate nib, whilst being careful to keep the crumbs well away from his new okayama denim shirt.



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 Being the proud owner of this badboi meant instagram was an option that had remained closed to me.






Get a smartphone fool comes the chorus from the hypnotic glowing interfaces.



The thing is i was thinking i'd rather don my speedos and bathe in the liberty of not being continually at the behest of an email or a notification or the like, something that would keep me locked into an intensive relationship with my phone. I figured having a nokia with all its limitations would afford me a certain type of freedom. The chance to gaze at the autumn's falling leaves perhaps, without the option of making said private moment public, and enhancing it further with some thoughtfully chosen #hashtags. Only to then miss the rest of a lovely autumnal scene i was witnessing because i was busy checking my phone to see who had liked the photo of the lovely autumnal scene i was in the middle of that i was missing.



Why join instagram at all then dickhead



Is a very good question. 



Something about seeing what all the fuss is about, being aware of what i'm missing, keeping my enemies closer. Probably because i've read about the mini-endorphin hit one is meant to get from being on the receiving end of an instagram like. And how i could do with a few of those, maybe even get a few followers, whilst being careful to not make that the sole currency or source of where i derive personal validation, because that would be a bit strange.







So how the hell do you post onto instagram from a laptop then you bore.



Is a great question, that i am now dying to answer.



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First came the research part. 



Was this even possible? Apparently so.







This wasn't going to be easy.



Techspot had a video tutorial with a soundtrack that was killer.






Proper rasta beats yo. I almost stopped watching rolled a phat one and floated away.



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The rest of the process is now lost to me in a blur of perseverance. 



Which i've recalled so you can get an idea.



1. Turns out i had to download a program onto my phone called Bluestacks.


2. Then i had to download a mac friendly 'Instagram' application onto my desktop.


3. I then had to run the instagram ap through bluestacks, making sure it was setup properly, but being careful not to absent-mindedly simply run it through my mac because it would pick up on the fact that it wasn't a phone, thus making instagram unusable because it is a smartphone-only application


4. Basically bluestacks was fooling my computer into thinking it was a smartphone (!)


5. Then came the first big hurdle. Blustacks didn't want to connect to the internet.





6. There was a way around this. 


7. What i had to do was download something called ES File Explorer.






8. Which took quite a long time.


9. This then allowed me to get onto a rather pixelated faux 'smartphone screen' from my desktop.






10. From where i could log into instagram. Hammer-time.


11. If i then wanted to upload photos of my daily-life - since i gather this is what instagram seems to be for - namely updating people you rarely speak to on your day-to-day activities, well-constructed selfies, brunches you're about to enjoy, sweet photos of your children, holidays you're on with friends, of course making sure to render said-photos as desirable-looking as possible so as to leave these people you rarely speak to in no doubt whatsoever that you seem to be on top of things and that your life is really quite good, so that when you do see these people you rarely speak to, they already know exactly what you've been up to so you don't have to waste all that time with all that boring smalltalk, if i wanted to do all of this, then the process is as follows.


12. I would have to get out my trusted Canon G5X, since the pixels on my nokia phone camera just don't cut it, and devise to snap away at these photos of my well-constructed life, perhaps even mould my life into instagram-worthy snapshots, so people could keep abreast of what i was up to, while i was at it. 


13. But most importantly, make sure to keep the photos spontaneous-looking, as if they had been caught in the blinking of a smartphone's eye. 


14. Finally, upload them onto my computer with a usb cable once i got home.





15. And finally of course, the instagram post itself. 


16. Posting has proved to be a bit of a minefield. The fake smartphone interface is so pixelated that i literally have to write posts with my eye 3mm away from the computer screen, which as you can imagine is not doing my retina the world of good.






17. So all in all, one post takes me on average the wrong side of 35 minutes. Not what one would describe as insta, but not too bad.



My thinking is that the relative labour-intensiveness of the whole process will make me more discerning with what i post, and as a result my quality control will take care of itself. But that's for my followers to judge. So four days in, how is it going? Well as you can see i have three times less followers than people i follow, which in instagram-speak means for every one person that likes me, three people hate me and everything i represent.






Each unfollow is like a knife through the heart, but i know i just have to ride out these tricky first weeks. 



And i'm seeing my therapist on monday.



How long are you going to stick at it then, jesus.



I'm not sure. Until i get enough personal validation from it for it to make me truly happy i suppose. But definitely not past the point where i start measuring my true sense of worth by how many followers i get, or how many people like my posts, all of that stuff. I'll be damned if i'm going to let that happen to me.



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So keep your eye's peeled for some from-the-hip gramming guys.



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