Beauty Instagram Broke My Brain

Yours, too?

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I define insanity as posting to Instagram over and over and expecting to dismantle beauty culture. Or maybe that’s foolishness?

I quit Instagram last year to keep from going insane, or to stop being a damn fool. It wasn’t good for my self-image, it’s probably not good for yours, and it felt increasingly bizarre to post anti-establishment beauty writing there when it was immediately overpowered by filtered, Photoshopped, FaceTuned photos — a scrolling sea of Instagram Faces — and pseudo-scientific ingredient infographics that reinforced the beauty standards I was attempting to break down. In our Active Voice podcast episode, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie asked me a question I get a lot: “Doesn’t that mean you should post your work on Instagram, to meet people where they need it?” (I’m paraphrasing.) My answer is no, I don’t need to martyr myself over there, I’m not that important! I don’t need to resign my brain to social media rot in order to do good work. No one does.

So I abandoned my professional Instagram (you can read more about it in The Atlantic), I went private on Twitter, and I reinvested my effort into this Substack newsletter and its readers instead.

A couple weeks ago, though, I waded back into the social waters with Substack’s latest feature, Notes. Notes looks and feels like a calmer take on Twitter. It’s a space to post short-form content — mostly words and quotes and comments and links to articles, sometimes photos (but not, like, filtered-selfie-photos). It’s a way to connect writers to readers, and readers to readers, and writers to writers. It’s free. It’s funded by Substack subscribers, not corporate advertisers, and calls itself a “subscription network” rather than a “social media network.” This essentially means Notes doesn’t prioritize content that encourages outrage or status anxiety or shopping links — all things that drive maximum attention to advertisers, which is why most social media is so awful, I think — but good writing, good questions, and thoughtful comments. So far, I like it! It seems healthier for me, more valuable for you, and has none of the visual mindfuckery of Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

Substack Notes is open to anyone — writers, readers, lurkers, compulsive posters — and if you’re so inclined, you can join me there!

I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like snippets of unhinged PR emails:

or links to beauty-related articles I’m reading:

or pictures of the ducklings that hatched in my garden:

maybe I’ll even get back into memes!

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How to join

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to The Unpublishable, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!

You can also share notes of your own. I hope this becomes a space where readers can share thoughts, ideas, and interesting quotes from the things we’re reading on Substack and beyond.

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If you encounter any issues, you can always refer to the Notes FAQ for assistance.