The Problem With Instagram Is Friends

Content on instagram is exceedingly boring because compared to Reddit or Twitter/X, content is driven by ‘sympathy likes’ from friends.
Sympathy liking to show support regardless of the quality of the content distorts the ranking of posts, the algorithm that determines what future content will be shown and also the incentives of posters to post things that will garner cheap likes rather than anything novel or meaningful.
Posting anything online is a form of performance and should be taken as such. The problem occurs when people mistake their performance of their lives for their actual lives. It’s not that people didn’t like your wedding but maybe the way you took the photo and the caption was so cheesy that it fast tracked the development of lactaid.