The 7 Deadly Sins Of Instagram

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1. Selfies are only appropriate and/or welcomed (using that word grudgingly, here) under the following two circumstances: to display a new haircut (only one is needed: we can imagine the view from every angle of your head with a single pic) and on #SelfieSundays (and, even then, should be limited to once a month max; bonus usages available if selfies are ugly and not attention-seeking/“like”-striving glamour shots).  “Oh, you have such beautiful blue eyes and rockin’ bangs…Please show me that via social media every single day,” said no one ever.

2. Chill with the hashtags.  Seeing “#instafollow,” “#instalike,” “#tagsforlikes,” “#followme,” “#nofilter,” and “#sexy,” on every single picture truly makes your lopsided follower-to-followee ratio even more pathetic.  #Stop.  #NoOneCares.  #YourStarbucksIsntSexy.

3. There might be nothing more obnoxious than a single person hogging your InstaFeed for five, six, seven pictures in a row.  We get it—You had a fun weekend and took too many precious pictures to decide which to post.  If only there was a social media outlet to create an album for all of those pictures…. Or, better yet, a convenient app to easily compile pictures into a collage!  How ingenious.  Limit it to one Instagram per twelve hours, people.

4. And, speaking of other social media sites, sharing the same InstaPic across your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc—on all of which you have the same followers, by the way—is plain overkill.  Plus it hurts your chances of earning a high number of likes/retweets/comments/shares/favorites across all platforms; it’s basic mathematics.

5. The only thing worse than a feed full of the utmost stereotypical subjects—Starbucks, food porn, feet on the beach, clouds, anything else you can see by pulling your eyes away from your phone and taking a look around for a split second—is a long list of photos of text.  Nobody looks on Instagram to see a dollied-up inspirational quote or filtered compilation of texts from your mom or a screenshot of your own tweets that we just saw scrolling through twitter t-minus two minutes ago.

6. If I had a dollar for everyone I knew that won a year’s worth of bras from Victoria Secret (how you measure 365 days’ worth of undergarments, I’ll never know) or a $500 gift card from Visa simply by reposting a picture, I would be penniless.  Chances are, if there are typos strewn across the image, a misspelling in the name handle, and/or a number of followers less than your own measly count, the too-good-to-be-true contest is indeed just that.  Stop clogging our feeds with your gullibility, please and thank you.

7 And, finally, puh-lease stop with the concept of “#nofilter.”  Firstly, everything can use a filter.  That is the point of Instagram, is it not?  Secondly, we understand that you appear hot and tan and gorgeous without the added benefit of a filter so whoop-de-freaking-doo.  Thirdly, just because the setting sun or budding flower looks pretty without a “LoFi” to make the colors pop does not instantly make you an expert photog.  And, lastly, most people are straight-up lying when they say “#nofilter” anyways.  Especially on selfies.