Well, since I create videos for Instagram, I need to get a better picture of who the person on the other side of screen is. So first things first, I have established that they are a very emotional and unable to deal with boredom type of person. Okay? Instagram is almost a coping mechanism for people now. And why is that? There is a lot of information out there. Everything is always shit. Basically, world has a negative expectancy per person. Like things are shit, by the way, okay? Only if you know your destiny and work on it, you will have a really, really, really great time. Most people won’t. So they’re having negative thoughts, and Instagram is a way out of that. It is essentially a coping mechanism for the emotional, the bored, and the non-creative person. They might have the desire to create things, but they just wouldn’t be able to. And they have a lot of yearnings. Everybody wants a good life, everybody wants to have freedom, have money, have good relationships, have status, be happy, not be anxious, a lot of things. And almost all of them have none of it. So the coping mechanism becomes watching things that keep them emotionally high. It can be get-rich-quick videos, it can be motivational videos, it can be drama videos, it can be fight videos, it can be skits and sketches. Okay? Anything that makes them forget their own yearning or participate in it in a vicarious way. Okay? So these are really strained people, and they are only on this platform for emotional reasons, and they are not going to create much. So that means the how-to-do-it content is not going to do well here. Another point is if they are here for emotions, you cannot be someone emotionless. Like, okay, you can curate that vibe to give off a sense of calm and peace. Those are also emotions they are after. But you have to understand the nuance here. This is an inherently emotional and volatile collection of people. So you have to have spectacles, and you have to be kind of the thing that induces emotions. The blandness that or the stillness that can do well in books or in lectures or interviews or YouTube will not work here.

That’s why the things that do well there we see are related to really tribal or primal things, politics, celebrities, looks, culture wars, get rich quick, motivation, comedy, really accessible absurdism. Those are the things that. reign supreme there. Another one can be humor and skits. You get the vibe. It’s nowhere on the same league as a lecture, a interview or a book might be.

They open Instagram because their current internal state is unsatisfactory. Bored. Restless. Lonely. Anxious. Envious. Tired. Unstimulated. Unsure what to do with themselves. Maybe they want money, attractiveness, status, romance, freedom, confidence, belonging, momentum. But in the moment, they do not necessarily want to do the work associated with those things. They want to feel closer to the state.

A person on Instagram is a kid throwing tantrum saying I want it right now, make me feel like that right now. That’s all they wanna do. They don’t want to take action. They wanna hear shit and feel. It is humanity reduced to its base nature and in its most needy form.

“Here are 7 steps to build X” quietly tells them:

You need to remember this.
You need to act.
You may fail.
You need to expend effort.
You are now in the arena.

That can destroy the very escape they opened Instagram to obtain.

Whereas:

“This 22-year-old made $1m doing this bizarre thing”

allows them to remain safely in the stands while still consuming the feeling of possibility.

Not:

“How to become rich.”

But:

“What rich people understand about money.”

Not:

“How to become attractive.”

But:

“Why this face looks unusually attractive.”

Not:

“How to build a great company.”

But:

“Why this tiny company became terrifyingly powerful.”

Not:

“How to become confident.”

But:

“The strange behaviour genuinely confident people have.”

The viewer gets to inhabit the identity without immediately paying its price.

So it is a tool for people to feel something without being it. It is a mode for them to instantly create a feeling of being something without being that thing. People wanna feel rich. People wanna feel confident. People wanna feel good looking. People wanna feel all sorts of positive things. So what Instagram is doing is okay. People have yearnings. How do we make them feel as if they Have it. How do we put them in an emotional state where they feel like they have it, and everybody wants to feel that, so they will keep coming back for it.

They do not want how to become confident in ten steps in a month. What they are looking for is a forty to sixty second piece of media that will make them feel as if confidence is really achievable. I already have it, I almost have it, and thus I can already feel confident. And then in the next swipe it all goes away. So basically it’s like Quick commerce of emotions. Previously we had epics, we had books, we had songs to induce emotions, and they took their time. This is quick commerce of emotions, you know. The feeling of confidence in sixty seconds, the feeling of tribe in sixty seconds, the feeling of being desirable in sixty seconds. This this is insanity, the feeling of being smart that you can understand AI in sixty second video. The feeling of being a great parent because you watched a sixty second parenting video. God damn, this is deeper than I thought. This is really quick commerce of emotions.

Older media often required immersion before emotional payoff. A novel could spend 200 pages making you care. A film might take an hour to earn catharsis. Even a song asks you to remain inside one emotional world for a few minutes.

Instagram compresses the fulfillment window.

Confidence, delivered in 40 seconds.

Belonging, delivered in 15.

Desirability, delivered in 8.

Hope, delivered in 30.

Outrage, instantly.

Status, instantly.