Sharing photos on the internet is in a weird state lately.

I’ve been on Instagram since the dawn of time (grandpa Aaron here), and have seen its rise and fall in terms of quality and integrity of content. What used to be a pure, wonderful experience in sharing pics of your lunch and “artistic” snaps of some trees, has now turned into just another social media attention hellscape that feels mostly awful to use.

I can’t speak from a professional’s perspective (not anymore at least), but as I consider what it means to grow in the craft and share regularly, here are my general, mostly cheeky thoughts on each:

• Sharing pictures on Twitter feels like it needs more substantial writing or storytelling behind it to feel worthwhile.

• Sharing on Instagram means you’re either a professional who gets jobs from posting (certainly not fun), or you’re battling tooth and nail against the algorithm for your grandma to see random pics of your kids.

• Sharing on Facebook seems almost exclusively for pics of life events: Weddings, engagements, kids, cats, seasonal stuff, etc — nothing artistic in any way.

• Sharing on Pinterest is the polar opposite of Facebook: It’s entirely for business via trying to get the algorithm to pick up on your work, which also requires you to have a product, course, or service to point people to.

• LinkedIn is just... y'know what, let's not talk about it.

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And then there are the new players, such as Posts.cv and Cosmos which feel substantially better to be part of, but… severely lack in the numbers department compared to the main players. As I write this and get the links above (you should check them out!), it seems like I need to spend more energy on these two and see how it goes…?

I used to be stoked about sharing photos on the internet, and I want to get back to that again. Doing more things out of joy instead of obligation or a false sense of business momentum.