Vol 27 of Thursday Third Things
Instagram Killed the Postcard
THURSDAY THIRD THINGS: VOL 27
Your curated weekly curation of adventures worth taking & stories worth telling
Hey, can we talk about these excessively long watermelons I saw at the grocery store?
Digging around the interwebs last week for research and stories about Instagram, I stumbled across this little gem. I couldn’t find a place for it in the piece I wrote, so I’m including it here.
I love that he opens with the question, “When was the last time someone sent you a postcard?” because— NOT TO BRAG BUT — I send and receive postcards all the time. I LOVE postcards. I also like handwriting letters to my friends and I’ve been doing it for the last decade.
Still. I don’t know if there’s any research evidence to prove Jim Stiles’ claim that Instagram killed the postcard, but I feel compelled by the thought of it. Maybe it did. The same way I think Instagram likely killed the physical photo album. I think it’s wonderful that we want to share our lives with the world (why else become a writer?), but perhaps it needs to happen more slowly.
“Now tourists share their journeys in real time with selfies and tagged locations, all posted on Instagram or facebook or Tik Tok or whatever it is the world is doing this week…it’s that “instant interaction” and “instant gratification” that we now not only demand but expect. And people travel so quickly and try to absorb so many “experiences” in such a short period of time, that nowadays…tourists can easily be home before the postcards even arrive.”
Part of my reason for leaving Instagram was that every post began to feel the same. The same video style, with the same trending music, and same joke redone over and over and over again. (There were a lot of other reasons, too). There were a handful of exceptions but not enough to make me regret my choice. And to grow on Instagram, you had to play that game. Art, unfortunately, does not equal growth.
Writer Rachel Katz points out a similar problem on Substack, something I’ve been noticing as well. There’s a certain kind of post that does really well. And it’s very clearly not the artsy, literary posts. With only so much time in a day, what’s an artist to choose? The audience, or the art? And is there a world in which we don’t have to choose?
“But the reality is that after almost two years of writing here I can predict with scary accuracy how popular an essay will be before I publish it. And that makes me sad. It pains me that my formulaic “what I learned from one year of writing on Substack” post is my most popular ever, and furthermore that I knew this would be the case before even writing it.”
Writing Best Sellers Without Tours & TikTok
Clearly, there’s a theme to my curation this week. While I have never heard of, nor ever read anything by Emily Henry, I now very much want to because I am charmed by her push away from the “quasi intimacy” readers expect now with writers thanks to social media.
While she is still on Instagram, it seems like she uses it fairly lightly. “When Instagram dies, I die with it. That’s my last social media,” she says in the article.
I love these stories of subverting social media culture and I want to keep bringing them to light in an age that feels impossibly interwoven with our phones.
“Henry doesn’t want to be, as she puts it, a “writer slash mini-celebrity.” She’s a romance novelist, full stop. It’s an uncommon, maybe even gutsy, approach in the era of the all-access pass, when readers of popular fiction expect a level of quasi intimacy with favorite writers.”
Uh oh! I got old! I don’t know a single one of these songs (though I thankfully recognize MANY of the artists). So, the playlist is downloaded and I’m digging in.
So far I’m really liking All In Good Time by Iron & Wine and Fiona Apple (no surprises there) as well as Don’t Forget Me by Maggie Rogers (again…absolutely no surprises). Maybe this is the year I finally get into Billie Eilish. Maybe.
Bring out the tinfoil and start making your hats!
Did you know that mind reading technology has gotten so good that we need laws to protect ourselves from exploitation? Yeah, me neither.
But, apparently Colorado just passed a law that includes biological and brain data in its State Privacy Act because the technology surrounding mind reading and brain mapping is advancing so quickly.
And with that, I am grateful to Colorado and terrified I will have no private places left to retreat to someday in the not too distant future. Though…if we’re putting it all on Instagram anyways, who cares?
Hello. I was today years old when I learned the phrase “Big Dick Energy” that seemingly appeared out of thin air arose from a single Tweet following Anthony Bourdain’s death in 2018. (And if you think I’m being crass, even dictionary.com has a special entry for BDE.) (Also, I don’t give a rat’s tit if you think I’m being crass.)
I was also today years old when I learned about the meme-ification of Bourdain as a character and have had a blast reading through some of the meme-y jokes. I think he would have loved them.
My mom really liked Anthony Bourdain and we watched a lot of Parts Unknown growing up. I was pretty young, but the main themes I picked up from Bourdain were: All people are human and if you don’t treat them as such, you can fuck right off AND the world is full curious, dark, but wonderful things — go in search of them.
I’m sad he’s dead. I’m sad he died the way he did. And I’m so glad we’re finding the silliest, most endearing ways to remember him.
“There is a genre of tweet that imagines Bourdain as an analogue for yearning. “Girls don’t miss their ex,” someone posted four years ago, “they miss Anthony Bourdain.” The line still regularly appears on social media. That people have taken the beloved character he constructed and turned it into a beloved caricature is no surprise. It is a natural progression: Man becomes character, and character becomes meme.”