Influencers of the 21st Century

Instagram became the platform. For a couple years it was whoever—Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube—but Instagram won. That’s where you had to exist if you wanted to matter. We all knew that and clicked in anyway.

What was in there was very exact. Tanned skin, carved abs, white apartments that looked expensive because they were empty. People photographed on beaches that looked like they’d never worked. Each body part seemed to mean something specific. Abs made you stare. Cheekbones meant you understood taste. Thin legs told a story. Big breasts were somehow an argument, something you couldn’t ignore.

It sounds absurd when you say it out loud, but those pictures were where we lived for hours. We built our sense of what to want around them. I knew women in their twenties who’d look at these images knowing they were impossible and then feel bad about themselves anyway, which might be the worst part. Now the kids starting out just begin at that place—they don’t remember a before. Twelve-year-old girls thinking about thigh gaps. Every boy wanting to be a hypebeast, dressed a certain way so the internet knows he’s in the game.

I can’t tell if it’s worse than it sounds or exactly as bad. We built this and now it’s what we have.