I deleted my Instagram account last night.

I tell you this with some whiny hipsterism but I do so with valid reasons.

I have to say I’ve met a ton of really cool people on IG, digitally and IRL, and I got a rush out of people responding to my pictures, but for the last while I’ve been feeling cold about the process. I left because:

1. I was tired of people posting stupid pics. Last night I had three “sneak shots” in a row – the kind of pictures where someone posts a clandestine shot of some “hot” guy out in public. Not only is that a total invasion of sexual privacy, but it’s says a lot about the people I was following. What are you? Some construction worker on the side of the digital highway hooting and drooling over anything that walks past? Do you really have to overshare when you’re horny? Do you think I’m impressed that you saw a hot guy at the coffee shop? I SEE HOT GUYS EVERYWHERE – as do you! Stop being creepy about it!

2. People post pictures of their dicks; Instagram takes it down (#2 point in their Terms of Service: NO NUDES); people call their followers idiots for ratting them out and whine about the takedown. Seriously? You’re going to complain about a free service enforcing it’s rules on you? Seriously?!?

2. See this re: shots of food. Call me an egomaniac but I went on IG to see interesting and fun pictures. For the last month or so, not so much.

3. Same idea for self portraits. Handsome or not, you must have SOMETHING else you think is important or interesting other than you stuck in traffic making the Blue Steel face? No? Well then, we’re done here.

4. I’ve been neglecting other things… like “life”. I would post three times a day to even out my stats: morning, lunch and bedtime. Every 6 hours or so, that way my views were steady and people didn’t get “bored” of me posting 6-7 shots in a row (grrr…) At these times I would also look through my feed and find that an hour had gone by fast. As example, it took me close to 3 months to read Cloud Atlas where as I could have gone through it in 3 weeks. I was wasting *my* time.

And this final point, discovered when I hit the Delete button: Much like Facebook content, IG saves your pics when you ask to be deleted. And this line in the terms of service makes me feel like I’ve just provided Facebook with 1200+ images they can use for ads:

By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly (“private”) will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing is for free on the internet. And if it is, you should be wary of it.

I’m going to miss the energy I got from people liking what I did and said on IG, but I’ll be channeling it back into my own world, my own work and my own product. Here on DeadRobot Heavy Industries and Twitter*.

*yes. that was a joke.