The day my Instagram account disappeared

And what it taught me about my dependence on social media and need for validation

I’ve been making stories on my Instagram for some time now. Years in fact. I have developed a bit of a skill for putting my life into short films - usually sharing 2-3 a week. I do them instead of writing books. I do them instead of gazing lovingly into my children’s eyes whilst they make figures of out of wooden pegs and other wholesome things.

I use giphys to bring to life the reality of being an older mum. I find it therapeutic, it’s an extension of my personality- I’ve always had a love of story telling and my social circle has cut right down post Covid (with only 4-5 good mates now) and things often go wrong in my life and I enjoy making content out of these things. Not the really awful stuff (though I write about that sometimes tood). The stories are more about just silly things.

I get a lot of feedback on these stories. I get people stopping me in the street to tell me how much they love them. They don’t take me long to make as I’ve developed short cuts and do it quickly. For a while here was an influencer who was basically copying them and I got into a bit of an argument with her online after several people pointed her out to me. She told me that I can’t copyright content and she’d go on doing it regardless. She’s moved to Tik Tok and has about 5 billion followers now so shows you how karma doesn’t always deliver what you’ve hoped it would.

I’ve made thousands of stories in my time, archiving a few but the majority just floating up into the ether (sitting in my archives but not earning me a living).

Then of course there are also my reels. I have kept quiet about those as I spend less energy on them overall. I tend to sort of come up with an idea and do it and then forget about it. They are generally very low brow comedy. Nothing that is going to win me a BAFTA, that’s for sure.

Yesterday I was walking with my mum and kids in Crystal Palace, and a woman, a lovely woman came up and said - ‘I love the stuff you do on your Instagram! Your stories are so relatable. It’s great!’ I said thank you and kept moving on my way. I felt good about life - I WAS A SUPERHUMAN! and then it went back to being a drag because everything went wrong.

A train journey with two kids that took twice the amount of time. No snacks and no drinks so they were losing their shit. A crap lunch in Subway which felt like eating food off the floor, it tasted so bad. I have spent so much money this half term on bad food. And I am lucky I know because I have a job and can buy bad food but it still just adds to this feeling that I am always being ripped off at every turn.

Then later something weird happened, and my account showed up as having no posts and no followers. I was a ghost. At first I thought it must be a bug. I could feel my anxiety rising. I mean I’ve been on social media for a long time (since the dawn of the Muminfluencer so around 2012) and yes I might come off it one day, but I want to decide when to come off it, rather than just have my account disappear.

I was trying to do bedtime and then had to take myself outside to vape (this habit is ridiculous for a woman my age, and yes it’s on my list of things to quit, along with ‘Cheese Tasters,’ from M&S). Anyway nothing would refresh on the feed. It looked like my account had nothing on it. I looked down and my body was actually disappearing, like from the ground up I had just a waist and arms floating about in the kitchen as I made myself a camomile tea to counteract the vape fumes filling my ageing body.

Once one kid was in bed, I did what every stressed woman without a built in spa at home does. I poured myself a deep, hot bath and put some Epsom salts in there. I then contemplated the idea that none of my content existed. That it was all gone. That the stolen minutes I’d spent each day uploading giphys of Robert Redford smiling or Steve Carrell from ‘The Office,’ looking pissed off, or the whole series of Elizabeth Taylors that I go back to time and time again (taken from the film- ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’)…all this content, the stuff that people had told me they loved….GONE.

And the reels. The ones where I pretended to be on the phone and held up a banana to my ear. Or the ones where I wore a baseball hat and pretended to be a motivational podcast host like Glennon Doyle.

POOOF. Gone forever.

And my followers too…all gone. What about them?

Over 21k disappeared and maybe not immediately noticing at all that my content wasn’t there, but maybe some a little sad that the middle aged woman who made them laugh had gone without a trace. Maybe thinking that I needed to do the post that everyone usually does where they say - ‘Hey I am leaving Instagram now you dorks because I have a life and want to live in the moment instead of being a social media addicted sap like you!’

For a moment I thought that this would be good for me. This not being on Instagram. This eradication of my identity. It’s true that many think I’m odd before they meet me if they’ve seen my content ahead of time. I am sure there are work colleagues who might think I’m a bit of a freak. Others no doubt don’t care and just see it as a hobbie like train spotting or bird watching.

The other aspect however is that I’m a chronic people pleaser, and whilst I don’t check who likes and dislikes stories, I’m keenly aware when one is going down well. I like to plump up my tail feathers a bit when I see things kicking off on the grid and lots of good comments stacking up. It makes me feel less dead and middle aged.

It’s the same sort of thrill you might get watching ‘Saltburn,’ until you remember that you are even older than the Mum character who is hot and so are basically irrelevant and could maybe play the Grandma of the posh boy who everyone detests, sings Sinatra under her breath and quietly farts (this character doesn’t exist in the film but I think perhaps she could).

I also get a small thrill seeing celebrities responding to my stories. The people stopping me now and then too. I like it. Just like a truffle pig likes identifying a truffle and rolling its snout all over the damn thing. I am thirsty (this is the word my 10 year old keeps using which is inappropriate but has entered our household). Not thirsty for sex. Okay maybe also that but mainly for validation. For people to laugh at my jokes. To captivate an audience like a prima ballerina doing her solo at the Royal Opera House.

It got to about 8 in the evening and I started to panic again.

‘I think something weird has happened and I’ve lost my Instagram account,’ I said to my daughter, fully aware that I was doing that parenting thing where you have to follow it up with a statement like - ‘Yes I know I shouldn’t be getting validation from a social media account, but it’s just that it’s taken me some time to build up this account, and yes it does give me a sense of validation sometimes, and yes that makes me insecure, and it’s not what I want for you but it’s too late for me because that boat has already sailed you see.’

I messaged a good friend who knows about this stuff and she gave me a couple of tips. Then I deleted the app. I thought about how all my achievements were chiefly based around Instagram, that yes I’d published books too, but did these books really stand up as my entire life’s work? What about the thousands of fucking stories I’d spent time curating? What about the reels?

(Some might say my children and of course they’d be right. My children - that goes without saying).

Luckily the account sorted itself out. It turned out that I’d shared a phrase that wasn’t well received (something about kids fighting one another), and they’d taken the content down. The account was back to normal.

This morning I went for a short run and thought more about the fact that so many people watch my stories but they don’t generate any income. I also thought about their transient nature, how they stay there for a short amount of time and then disappear. I thought about whether I could find some way of turning them into an income. Then I thought about how I need to get my validation from inside, because I’m a grown ass woman.

Then this morning I noticed that my story about my journey home from my Mum’s had generated tons of messages. So many people had liked it. I’d used some particularly good giphys including one of Robert Redford smiling kindly (it always goes down well you see).

This validation gave me the strength to push through another inset day with both kids at home. It gave me the strength to live with the knowledge that five books down and I still haven’t hit the bestseller list. It made my joints hurt a little less as I bent down to pick up my 5 year old so I could blow her nose.

One day this Instagram content will make me famous.

Or would it be better if I just disappeared?