First Year w/a Smartphone: WTF Happened?!
IG: Green.Catalyst
Part 2: 4 Key Insights
- Read Part 1
I’ve added a compulsive, mental meta layer onto my life for the first time. 1 year later, the meta-tech worlds of Smartphones & Instagram have left me with 4 key insights.
4 Key Insights From The First Year of iPhone & Instagram:
Learning Connections & Opportunity are Way Boosted!
So much valuable feedback, support & knowledge has come from my fellow Instagrammers. I've started actively tuning into other people’s work, and their reactions to & input on my work, which I rarely did before. Learning through posts, articles, and videos about how others are approaching bringing the regenerative lifestyle online is super helpful! I've also gained a lot of inspiration to collaborate with others via the connections made online, and to experience new people & places.
Here are the amazing things I've learned about & been inspired to participate in so far because of Instagram:
- Cordyceps cultivation & harvest, plus wild cordycep gathering! Meeting William Padilla-Brown, the first commercial producer of the potent medicinal powerhouse known as the Cordyceps mushroom, helping him in his grow warehouse and them going to the MycoSymbiotics mushroom festival this summer, plus connecting to the Asheville fungi nerds network were direct results of my friendship with Will - that started on Instagram!
- Meeting & hanging out with world-famous, hydrologically positive designer Zach Weiss! He originally reached out to me through Instagram with a remote job offer, which has led to my helping them with promotional stuff and getting to meet him in Portland, Oregon for a talk & farm tour. The tour was at Tabula Rasa Farm, where we got to see & hear about earthworks being installed & thought through. Zach and I also got very fortunate in layover times and were able to visit Village Homes in Davis together, touring a version of sustainable suburbia I've admired for years! Score!
- Staying in a tiny house in Umpuqua, Oregon thanks to one of my amazing followers,
_of_freedom! While I was there we went to the beautiful naturally formed Toketee hot springs, with piping hot mineral-rich water cascading down into white-blue pools to soak in. While there I also got to hang out with emus for the first time! AND, best of all, I got to participate in legally harvesting and trimming 12 organic homegrown medical marijuana plants. SO. FUN.!
- This February, I'll be heading to spend 2 months in Maui thanks to connecting with & promoting Living Earth Systems regenerative design company on Instagram! While there, I'll be learning about & helping with media production, regenerative farming, natural pool systems, & styrofoam composting using mealworms. Swoon!
Drip-Feed Culture is Irritating & Limiting
Drip-feed culture is alive & well on Instagram, with many popular accounts posting not much but pretty fluff with a few facts dropped in now & then. Overall, the platform is not exactly being used to its full potential.
One of the real challenges in bringing permaculture, ecological literacy, & systems thinking to IG is that the interconnection of natural systems often necessitates the understanding of many other parts to fully "get" a concept or system.
Simplifying complex systems down to “chewable chunks” that can be absorbed in the ad-hoc, ADD format of Instagram is NOT simple in itself! Finding the balance between not enough information vs. overwhelming audiences with too much can be tricky, and I’m not always successful at walking the line. Distilling the beauty of complexity inherent in life systems in a way that leads to people feeling compassion towards the natural world & feeling empowered to act on that compassion is a goal I continually work toward!
Vanity Culture/ Ratio of Beauty to Content Engagement & Digestibility: They Correlate
Instagram is an aggressively visual medium. The presence of perfectly groomed online individuals in my daily life has definitely increased my personal obsession with & investment in my face & body, which hasn't always been healthy thanks to my obsessive tendencies towards personal perfection. Dramatically amped up skincare, hair & nail care & general grooming compared to last year are a few examples.
Positive effects of this vanity culture have been more frequent workouts & documentation of said workouts, clearer & healthier skin, & better looking hair & nails (not sure they’re healthier, though). I've also started paying attention to my outfits again... I kind of didn’t have a reason to for the past several years because my time was spent largely either in sweats binge-learning information, or in janky outdoor gear covered in sweat, dirt & bug bites.
Introspectively, I’ve started questioning why I get urges to post “sexy” things sometimes - is it a reflection of personal empowerment/social mobility? Is it low self-esteem seeking validation? Is it peer pressure from the IG culture of women constantly showing their bodies and promoting their “physical worth?” Is it reclaiming the human gaze and therefore empowering?
Flexing my Curation Muscles is Key!
These days, I'm much more likely to save & share interesting, informative, positive things I find with a large audience.
I've also discovered the power of the unfollow: The power not to see things that make me feel like shit about the world or about myself. Personally, I unfollow the dime-a-dozen bikini/ass chicks that make me feel bad about my body, boring accounts, negative accounts, and accounts constantly trying to sell me things. Also on the unfollow list are people I find triggering negativity in me in some way.
Essentially, my online curation is an extension of what I do in real life:
Draw people & practices that uplift, educate, & inspire me closer, while separating from disempowering, frustrating, & negative mindsets and narratives.
Instagram is a powerful positive manifestation tool when used in a healthy way!
I'm glad to share this journey with you as I wade deeper into "influencer" territory. (!)
I'm curious! What have you learned from social media & smartphone technology this year?
XOXO,
J