Why I'm Quitting the Dopamine Prison (aka Instagram)

in which I share my reasons for deleting Instagram, as well as some of my own backstory as a writer

“Mirrors on the ceiling

Pink champagne on ice, and she said,

‘We are all just prisoners here

Of our own device’

And in the master’s chambers

They gathered for a feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can’t kill the beast”

-- Hotel California

I’ve thought about this for a long time. Years, actually. If you followed me back in the Golden Era (circa 2017-18), you’ll know that I used to be what some might consider “prolific” at Instagram. I spent hours taking styled photos of books and teacups and posting on a schedule, all that racket. It was fine. I enjoyed it, mostly. I was building a “brand” and a “following,” which was what you were supposed to do, and it was going Okay. The problem was, I didn’t spend much creative energy on anything else—aka, the things I actually cared about, aka, writing novels and other long-form content—because I didn’t have much left to spend.

I wrote recently about the mental ensnarement we suffer as writers within this social media matrix—caught up in the continual manicuring of our identities and our art to suit a “brand” we’ve constructed for ourselves out of square photos on a visual grid app. (It turns out, this is just a nice way of saying prison.)

I first entered this hall of mirrors, not via Instagram, but via an online writing forum at age sixteen. Before that, I had never had any form of social media whatsoever. I just wrote. Between the ages of twelve and sixteen, I must have written hundreds of thousands, if not a million words. I wrote for hours per day and hours at night. I finished novels. They were Not Very Good, but they were complete manuscripts. I’ve not had this experience since, and it has taken me over a decade to figure out why.

Once upon a time, writing was a quiet place where a quiet teenager went to shut herself away from the noise of the world so she could hear herself think. It was a playground, a sandbox, a treehouse in the deep, wild woods where no one else ever went, and no one was invited. With the introduction of social media, however, the door to this magical, private world was opened—just a crack, at first—to the public, as you were encouraged to share your [incomplete] work on the writing forum.

This seemed harmless, so I did.

Now, you might expect that what followed was a soul-crushing tsunami of criticism that sucked sixteen-year-old me down in a riptide of doubt and self-loathing to the point that I wanted to quit, but that’s not what happened. Actually, it was the opposite. They loved me. The very first time I shared a piece of writing with the public, someone told me it made them cry. I was ecstatic. And thus the quest for dopamine on the internet commenced.

From that moment on, writing ceased to be something I did for myself and became something I did for other people. It was no longer play; it was a performance. Sharing work online progressed to sharing work at workshops, in person. I would tailor my excerpts to the occasion, weaving pure ~vibes~ into the illusion of a compelling plot, characters, etc. because you could only bring a few pages to wow your audience, and I would never pull excerpts from an outdated, no-good story. It had to be fresh, new, and impressive. I became proficient in the art of bullshitting—and it worked. But I never finished another manuscript.

I started throwing away ideas I thought wouldn’t perform well in the fast-paced environment of Internetland. Not flashy enough? Trash. Not trendy enough? Trash. Not gut-wrenching and poignant enough? Straight to trash, right away! The sacred aspect of writing—the bone-deep joy of simply weaving words together—had been lost, although I didn’t realize it. I’d wandered haphazardly into the Hotel California and been ensnared by its glitz and glamor. Even once I managed to realize this (which, as I said, was years ago), I couldn’t figure out how to leave.

Next came Instagram, a stage much more demanding and much more promising than my little hole-in-the-wall forum from high school. In order to be Somebody on Instagram, I had to channel everything I did, everything I was, into some pretty little shoebox called a “brand.” And so, since I had no finished novels that I wanted to share with the public (I’d actually quit sharing fiction publicly by this point anyway), I decided to create a performance around my writing process. Lots of people were doing this “behind the scenes,” “lifestyle of a writer” type of content, and so that seemed like a reasonable approach.

And thus began the journey of glamorizing my process for the cameras, when, in fact, by this point, I had little to no notion of what my “process” even was, since I’d spent so many years writing eye-catching vignettes instead of novels. Nevertheless, I persisted. I built that brand. I built that following. And, slowly but surely, I started to hate it.

I hated it because I realized that something fundamental had been altered within my psyche towards writing. And that fundamental change, I think, can be summed up by this excerpt I came across recently in someone’s Instagram stories:

“Creativity is how you draw meaning from life. It connects you to your inner child. It’s a way you practice joy and experience the pleasures of being alive. We live in an age where social media provides us with a platform for us to showcase our creativity. Yet our creative work gets valued based on likes, popularity, and co-signs by blue tick pages. We often feel that we must cater our creativity to what is expected, what is considered the norm and therefore manufacture something that doesn’t align with our inner joy. Creativity becomes a chore rather than a way to connect with being alive.” – Creativity and Social Media (author unknown)

I read this, and I felt seen. I had been trying for years by this point to rekindle the joy of writing—to rediscover that magical place, that solace I’d once had; to relieve the pressure of this online, astroturfed world buzzing with mind-numbing, soul-sucking static. I was so desperate for a different experience that I took two weeks off of social media, just to see what would happen.

It was astonishing. I wrote about it here, so I won’t spend too much time on it now, but suffice it to say, it was life-changing. Everything felt suddenly real and sharp and alive, and I was laser focused. I experienced a sort of mental clarity I hadn’t since before the writing forum.

When I returned from this profound experience, I honestly believed things would be different going forward. I really thought I’d be able to preserve that spark of life and freedom while wrangling the beast of Instagram.

Instead, everything creative felt more out of reach than it had before, and everything about Instagram felt cheaper and more fake and less worth my time. Yes, I thought, I should “build my audience,” (whatever that means) but what good was that if I never managed to create anything I actually wanted to share?

I just want to write. No obligations. No photos, no stories, no performative captions showcasing my process, or whatever. No camera always peering over my shoulder like some anticipatory, spectral audience. I’m over it.

In the words of Bilbo Baggins: “I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book.”

I want quiet. I want slow content. I want to be free of the constant mind-static generated by endless scrolling and passive consumption.

Maybe someday I’ll wade back into that stream, if I have a novel I feel is truly mine and not some weird, foreign collage of portraits fashioned for the lightspeed world of the ‘gram. I do want to share my work—don’t get me wrong—but in the meantime, I want an open sky to create under. I want space to read and space to write and space to think—to rediscover that place I used to go to connect with being alive. Because you can’t do that on social media. You really, really can’t.

I’ll still be here on Substack, so if you’re someone who wants to buckle in for the long-haul—whatever that might mean, if there is a novel someday, or if you just like my weird little commentary feed—feel free to subscribe. I’ll also be on Twitter (for now), so you can follow me there, too.

On that note, I guess I’ll see you around. Best of luck out there.