Enabling Fantasy

Via John Gruber, Jenna Wortham in Instagram Video and the Death of Fantasy:

Instagram isn’t about reality – it’s about a well-crafted fantasy, a highlights reel of your life that shows off versions of yourself that you want to remember and put on display in a glass case for other people to admire and browse through.

The author is spot on here: Instagram makes it easier than ever for Average Joe and Plain Jane to tell stories of their lives, to friends and (if they chooses so) to the public alike. However, even after reading her piece twice, I still cannot understand why she makes this look like a Bad Thing.

Instagram, like the first public blogging services – even photocopiers and the printing press – are tools that made it easier and easier for normal people to tell stories, and always those who wanted to listen, listened.

It’s why most of the photographs uploaded to Instagram are beautiful and entertaining slices of life and not the tedious time in-between of those moments, when bills get paid, cranky children are put to bed, little spats with friends.

Yes, yes, yes, and this is great news. Instagram et al. are enabling fantasy, and in no way are they “killing” it, as the author posits. Tear down the walls; don’t erect new ones.