Instastories — why though?

1350 Views

Some months back, I learned from some millennial friends how to watch Instastories.

If you’re a late adopter or casual user of Instagram and have no idea what an Instastory is, it’s a 15 second video someone can post on Instagram.  You can access Instastories a couple different ways:  1.  When you’re on the page where you’d scroll through your friends photos, look at the top before you scroll down and you’ll see where it says “Stories,” and it will show a line-up of profile pics from left to right with a colorful ring around each one.  If you click on one, then an Instastory will pop up — after it shows you all of that one person’s Instastories, it will automatically roll to the next person’s Instastory by going to the next one on the right, and the next, and the next and the next . . .  2.  Go to someone’s Instagram profile and if their profile picture has a colored ring around it, click on it, and their Instastories will pop up.

Anyway, enough about these instructions.

What I don’t understand is, why are people posting a gazillion Instastories in a row when it’s a single topic they’re talking about?  What I mean is, if you’re going to talk for a few minutes about where you are, what you’re cooking, your make-up routine, whatever it is you’re sharing — why are you spending SO much time starting new videos in 15 second intervals?  It makes no sense.  Especially for those of us that are watching (I cannot stop watching Instastories, aside from my critical comments here, I just keep letting that stupid thing roll to the next one and the next one and the next one).

Let’s say you’re talking about how you’ve decorated your home on Instagram, so you may say on the first video, “I wanted to show you guys how I have redecorated my kitchen, I love it so much, it’s exactly what I wanted” . . . and then you’ve run out of time to talk so the video stops.  So then you start another video and feel like you need to repeat what may have been cut off so you say “as I was saying, we re-did our kitchen and I love it so much, it’s exactly what I wanted, we went with granite countertops.”  And then the video cuts off.  So you start a new video “Yeah, so, um, I was saying, granite countertops, we got these at . . . ”  Video cuts off.  Start new video.  “We got these at a local counter store.”  Video cuts off.  Start new video.  “We almost didn’t go with . . .”  Video cuts off.  Start new video.  “If you didn’t see my last video I was saying we almost didn’t go with granite.”  Ugh, whyyyyyyyy?

Why is this happening?

And why am I watching?

And why are you repeating 7 seconds of what you said in the last 15 second video?

Why not just do a live video so it doesn’t cut off and people can ask questions real-time?  This isn’t reciprocal, this is a real question I’m asking to the Instagram world?!

No comprendo!

If you’re sharing something that may be 1 min and 30 seconds or less, then I totally understand Instastories because it can be 3-5 quick 15 second videos back-to-back and they make a fair amount of sense.  But if you’re going to do a full tutorial on something, why are you doing Instastories?

Anyway . . .

That’s enough of a rant for today.  I have Instastories to . . .

As I was saying, that’s enough for today . . .

I have Instastories . . .

I have Instastories to wa . . .

I have Instastories to watch.

Bye gu . .

Bye guys <<waves at camera with awkward unexpected 3 seconds left in 15 second window>>