Counterpoint: Why you SHOULDN’T be on Instagram

Last week, production editor/fashion writer/Rambo enthusiast Colleen McKenna wrote an extremely popular (and great) post on why companies should be on the photo-based social site Instagram to promote their companies. It was quick, thoughtful and to the point, but because I love to argue and am also a fairly terrible coworker, I thought I would offer a counter-argument. So, in the spirit of being awful, here are 3 reasons why you should never, ever be on Instagram.

1. Learning New Things is Hard, and Also Pointless
To use Instagram, you not only have to know how your phone works, but also how to upload pictures to the internet. Talk about complicated! Luckily, CNET reports that smart phone use is only going to grow at a compound rate of 24.9 percent per year, hitting 1.7 billion units by 2017, or one phone for roughly every 4 people on the planet (if you don’t count babies or people in prison, who probably don’t use too many phones, at least I hope). 1 in 4 odds is super-low, especially if you plan on only having 3 or less customers for your entire career, so why waste time learning a technology as new and as hard as taking a picture and selecting it from a file directory? Seems like a real brain-buster!

2. Being an Early Adopter Has No Value
Establishing your business on a social network early, before your competitors have a chance to build an audience and dilute your presence and voice, is stupid and pointless. We all know there’s no benefit to a clear marketing niche. It’s always better to start as late as possible, clawing after the tiniest bit of attention once all your customers have followed, networked and generally been in love with your greatest competitors for the last three or so years. It’s like the old adage says, “The best way to be successful is to copy someone else, as late as possible, and probably after they’ve already succeeded at it.”

3. Only Young People Use It
If there are two absolute facts I know about young people, it’s that they’ll never get old or ever be in charge of a business’s marketing. No marketing coordinators ever start work in their early 20s; the entry age is actually closer to late-60s, early 70s. And while that’s still young enough to involve using computers or looking at pictures, we all know that’s not how marketing works. It’s all done offline, usually yelled loudly by paid advertisers as they wander around a city’s streets. (It’s called “social networking,” maybe you’ve heard of it?) Young people will never change or advance in life, and even if a few somehow manage to, they will immediately adopt identical habits to their 60-year-old peers and not do anything different or indicative of their generation ever.

In conclusion, Instagram is dumb. No one should ever use it unless they like talking to young people (dumb), care about being first (double-dumb), or somehow already know how to use a computer’s most basic functions (Mega-dumb, capital of dumbsville, population: You’re dumb).

(Thanks for reading everyone, and see you all next week!)

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Monday Mike Fact: I’m into sarcasm. It’s like ice cream, but for mean people.

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