"Back then" we had Tumblr. It was basically the same as Instagram. But we had more than just square pictures and also each account had its own page with a search and history where you could easily jump to a specific month of a year and see an overview of the months post with thumbnails, from which one can go directly to the posts. All without an account or app.
Yes, tumblrs popularity was based on porn, but so is basically Instagram too. I only got locals from my usk walks, international usk or other artists that I like in my follow list, but still Instagram shows me soft porn front and centre when I open the search: adolescent beraly clad girls dancing. The same goes for when I look in the posts of the hashtag from my city or region, mostly girls fighting for attention by bending the no porn rules of Facebook as much as possible. The rest is full of "look what overly expensive thing I bought" posts. Finding other sketchers is hard.
Also I find the stream annoying from the app home page: it beraly shows me my followed local artists and instead fills it with advertising every 3 posts or some international posts from people I didn't follow, that just post under #sketching with what is definitely not sketching.
The only reason I am on Instagram is because it is basically a requirement to take part in urban sketching. Often u can find meetups only on Facebook or Instagram and while it isn't specified in the rules where you have to post them, based on the officials behaviour, it must be done on Instagram.
So it isn't really a choice for most. The "usk consortium" or however it is called is leading with their decision and as they promote Instagram for it, it won't change. You should have a better connection to them than us small folk, perhaps you could be so kind and talk about your concerns about the platform with them and bring others bigger artists to do the same. I would be grateful for it, because it is the "annoying" part at the end for me and I did catch me already stopping to post after sketch walks, because "someone else did it for me with the group pic". And it seems that only a third to barely the half of those I met on the walks (mostly the core group) seems to post their sketches from the walk or even have an Instagram account. Which also often makes me question why should I?
"Back then" we had Tumblr. It was basically the same as Instagram. But we had more than just square pictures and also each account had its own page with a search and history where you could easily jump to a specific month of a year and see an overview of the months post with thumbnails, from which one can go directly to the posts. All without an account or app.
Yes, tumblrs popularity was based on porn, but so is basically Instagram too. I only got locals from my usk walks, international usk or other artists that I like in my follow list, but still Instagram shows me soft porn front and centre when I open the search: adolescent beraly clad girls dancing. The same goes for when I look in the posts of the hashtag from my city or region, mostly girls fighting for attention by bending the no porn rules of Facebook as much as possible. The rest is full of "look what overly expensive thing I bought" posts. Finding other sketchers is hard.
Also I find the stream annoying from the app home page: it beraly shows me my followed local artists and instead fills it with advertising every 3 posts or some international posts from people I didn't follow, that just post under #sketching with what is definitely not sketching.
The only reason I am on Instagram is because it is basically a requirement to take part in urban sketching. Often u can find meetups only on Facebook or Instagram and while it isn't specified in the rules where you have to post them, based on the officials behaviour, it must be done on Instagram.
So it isn't really a choice for most. The "usk consortium" or however it is called is leading with their decision and as they promote Instagram for it, it won't change. You should have a better connection to them than us small folk, perhaps you could be so kind and talk about your concerns about the platform with them and bring others bigger artists to do the same. I would be grateful for it, because it is the "annoying" part at the end for me and I did catch me already stopping to post after sketch walks, because "someone else did it for me with the group pic". And it seems that only a third to barely the half of those I met on the walks (mostly the core group) seems to post their sketches from the walk or even have an Instagram account. Which also often makes me question why should I?