Why I Instagram My Dog

I take things with a pinch of salt these days when I’m surfing through my Instagram or other social media feeds. The masses all agree that most of the content we see appears to be perfect, but does anybody wonder about the rest? I mean, of course, what we are seeing versus what is actually happening doesn’t add up. Life can't be majority sunshine, sends, or other various sparkly moments, right? Maybe the missing piece of the pie, these more or less regular moments that aren’t “Instagram worthy” don’t make the cut, but they still happened. Right?

Doesn’t anybody want to know what Alex Puccio or Sasha Digiulian’s days off look like? Ok, that’s definitely not why they have a surplus of followers—but aren’t you curious?

Kurt and I scrolled through my own personal ‘gram a few nights ago and he guffawed at several pictures from 2013. One of them was a picture of a four-year-old girl I used to nanny in Bay Ridge: her knees were bruised and she was sitting on a park bench, nibbling on an unpeeled carrot. I had cropped her face but you could see a sliver of a smile in the photograph. He told me that he liked my old Instagram pictures better and I thought it was kind of funny because, other than to me, they’re pretty uninteresting. He said he liked them because they were “real”.

My life in 2013 was categorized by three things: climbing, kids, and dogs, which I think my social media accurately portrayed. Over time, climbing photographs took over the majority of my feed because, logically, I was spending a majority of my time doing it—but what about the rest?

Butt shots, birthday cakes, doughnut towers I painstakingly stacked or made my dog wear, crooked selfies, the unicorn onesie I deliberated buying for ten minutes, taco dinners–a strange mishmash of ridiculous and low pixel posts of things and events that matter a lot to me. And yeah—sometimes climbing.

I wrote a short essay some time ago about how no matter the social media platform you choose, there will always be gaps. There will always be missing context from your storyline. A friend once wrote an article about her dirtbagging experiences for a brand to discuss the sometimes reality of dirtbaggery—sleeping in Walmart truck stops and taking dishwashing jobs and showering in seven day intervals—but a heavy-handed editor tackled the essay to the point that it made dirtbagging seem downright glamorous. There was not one mention of peanut butter sandwich dinners.

I understand that brands have to adhere to a specific guideline. A feed that looks uniform isn’t necessarily unauthentic–maybe a snap of Alex Honnold eating spaghetti (does that guy do carbs?) or a dog in a pom-pom hat isn’t good marketing or inspiring enough—but it’s real. And it says that life isn’t one big series of epic moments all of the time, and that there are some pretty ordinary moments that happen in between that are worth acknowledging from time-to-time.

And while I can appreciate a peanut butter-less Instagram feed, I'm just as grateful for dogs in pom-pom hats, butt shots, and a picture of your taco dinner.