Why'd you remove yourself from Instagram in a time where so many creatives feel it's essential to be on it?
To the same point of it being unhealthy for me. Like I said earlier in this conversation, I never do things for one reason. It wasn’t just I'm addicted to Instagram so I'm going to quit. That's one reason. But part of it is me being impressionable. If I'm seeing somebody designing clothes in Paris, it's like, I got to go to Paris right now and I'm going to start looking at flights. Even if I don't buy it, that's distracting me for an hour of my day now. I see somebody making a painting. See Nate taking some photos. See you working at office Magazine. I'm thinking maybe I should get a job for a magazine. Maybe I should start my own magazine. I'm just so easily distracted and so that's part of it, me not wanting to be distracted.
And then the comparison is the thief of joy. Why am I not in Paris, in a mansion with a Lamborghini right now? Why am I not? And so, I was tired of having my joy robbed. I'm a simple dude. I don't need any of that. I'd like a Lamborghini. But I don't need that. Part of it was not wanting my joy robbed. Maybe it's not a day-ruining thought. It ruins five minutes of my life, or two minutes. So, it's taking my time back and taking my life back. And I wasn't posting anything. I wasn't doing anything on there. And so, I'm literally just consuming.
I think as creatives, comparing yourself to other artists can be such a damaging thing. Which is basically what Instagram is; comparing yourself to other people.
It’s a comparison machine. It's all it is. Like, hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. Hey, look at me. You're just looking. And our brain, as humans, is designed to compare ourselves to people, partly for survival. If our cave neighbor made a spear, it's in our best interest to observe and compare, oh, I need a spear. It's in our best interest to be like that. I need to learn how to make fire because his family's warmer than mine and my family's shivering in the cold. So, we're designed as humans to compare ourselves. We’re social creatures. So, it's not anybody's fault except the creators of Instagram. It's not anybody's fault that they're addicted or compare themselves to people when they're on Instagram. You're either on Instagram, comparing yourself to people, or you're just not on Instagram. It's not like you can turn off that thousands of years of evolution designing us to do that. And it's only been 30 years in technology.
That's interesting because I kind of assumed it was a modern-day thing.
No, for survival we've had to compare ourselves to other humans. ‘Compare’ may not be the word, but we had to see ourselves in relation to other humans since the beginning. Since we were monkeys or whatever. Because if they got coconuts or found the bananas, where's the bananas? My family's hungry too. So, I'm going to follow you there and go do it too. Monkey see, monkey do, right. You know what I'm saying?