Instagram: Creation that Inhibits Creation

In this fast-paced world, where everyone is in search of the beautiful and the good, Instagram has arisen to provide  people that have an affinity for art a haven for revering each other’s masterpieces. The “fun, beautiful, and easy way” of sharing artistic-looking photos through iPhones (and now Androids) has captured over 30 million users as of April 2012 and holds more than 150 million photos. It is worth $1 billion according to Facebook and has revolutionized photography forever. With an ease of use, it takes no skill to filter and share snapshots with friends in just a few clicks. This “fast beautiful photo sharing” app has bestowed unto all of mankind equal opportunities for art, giving them access to easy designing. Everyone has a chance to be artistic, everyone can colorize their photos, and everyone can see everyone else’s unique creations—that is, everyone and their mothers.

It is near impossible these days to sit at a restaurant without your neighbor realizing what a piece of work the dish is. Instead of waiting a few minutes for the food to arrive, one must wait an extra minute for an excessive photo shoot before eating can actually commence. Calm down! It’s ludicrous to have to wait for your date to obsessively take a well angled picture of the food, for art’s sake!

Clearly a significant milestone in tech-history, we must nevertheless question whether Instagram actually enables creativity and if this pixilated community is paving the way for more artistic talent being actualized. What happened to true creativity and unique talent? What happened to gargantuan efforts to proficiently understand a DSLR and Photoshop? Instagram strips real art of all the hard work that prior to its existence, only few committed and gifted individuals would normally have undertaken, and cheapens it to allow everyone access to fast art. As a result of our fast-paced society, true work and mastery has been stunted and obsolete. Rather than speeding up the process of searching for truth and beauty, we have only succeeded in circumventing it.