Opinion: Instagram shutdown shows users life without a filter

Shelby Lum
Mon, 14 Apr 2014 04:36:22 +0000
Campus, goes down, instagram, photography, shutdown

Photo app Instagram went down April 12.
Credit: Courtesy of MCT

“Zooming In” is a weekly series in which Photo editor Shelby Lum provides her insight on pop culture.

Hold tight Insta-verse. Those selfies had to wait for a little bit.

Saturday the photo sharing app Instagram went down and suddenly the plethora of food photos (#nomnomnom), cats and seflies didn’t have a home.

Instagram tweeted from @instagram (since they couldn’t Instagram a reason for the down time) that indeed the app wasn’t working but did not give a reason why.

“We’re working to fix a feed delivery issue. Thank you for your patience,” the tweet read.

Because of the app failure, users were forced toward another social media: Twitter.

“With Instagram not working I’ve just been knocking on people’s doors to show them my dinner and frankly the app leads to fewer arrests” and “Instagram is not working: Suddenly we see what people REALLY look like #nofilter,” users tweeted.

Of course, with such a serious impending issue like not being able to creep on which friends went to what parties and when and where celebrities’ new fave dining spots are, solutions had to be found and blame had to be placed, and Coachella took the hit for this one, at least, according to the world of Twitter.

All those music-loving hippies ruined it for the rest of the Instagram world, who were just trying to casually stalk friends via social media.

Film reporter and critic Charles Thorp tweeted “Tragic News: @Instagram down, people at #Coachella forced to enjoy music.” As music festival Coachella marches onward in the desert, fans have likely been enjoying music through the lovely screen on their phone, because who needs the real-life experience when you can take pictures and slap on a few filters to become the envy of all your followers? So with photos of OutKast flooding Instagram feeds, supposedly that’s what shut down the app — all too many photos of André 3000, and probably a few too many “Oh my gosh look I’m at Coachella” selfies.

Looks like your flowery crop top and retro cool sunglasses couldn’t be Instagrammed, only latergrammed.

Mostly though, the Instagram downtime just brought amusement to a lot of users, poking jokes at the lack of “news” dumped into the world through photos. Considering the app was up and running again after about three hours, looks like Instagram found a way to counteract all those blasted Coachella photos.