Vika's Hideout

Recently I've noticed that all sorts of ephemeral content (that is gaining traction in the current world, sadly) - be it Instagram Stories (especially videos since they can't be just screenshoot), Snapchat messages (it's its selling point) or some weird stuff like MTS's "Доступ" ("Access") exhibit and its ads (about content with limited access that may disappear or something) littering the infospace and my VKontakte feed (the only service besides Instagram I still access directly rather than via my reader) clutters up my mind with anxiety. I like content. I like good content. But I'm anxious about losing data and losing access to that content.

Fear of losing something is a part of human psychology (and as I seem to be one of Homo Sapiens, it affects me too). And disappearing content stimulates that fear, leading to more engagement with corporate apps that guard access to the content. Take Instagram stories, for example - there is no API, there is no way to read these in a user-controlled environment, and all of it disappears within 24 hours of being posted! The lack of API seems to be exactly for enforcing these rules - because if Instagram would let others hit its API (which does not exist at all right now - thank you Facebook) - oh no, they could save a story on their hard drives! or even archive them somewhere! oh no this is so scary! (it isn't)

This drives users to constantly check their Instagram app for people's new stories. What if Instagram set the "story" content lifetime to only one hour? It would drive you mad, wouldn't it? so thanks people who invented that concept for at least not driving users completely insane. But it still does bad things (at least with me).

There could be a solution - do not use stories at all! But then you'll miss things because other people do use "stories" to get their content online. So for now in this struggle around this "feature" the only winners are corporations.

Please don't use stories. Don't help corporations drive people like me insane.