Welcome!
Why am I here?
Dear Leyla,
I’m looking for a new home. A new online home. After years of trying to make it work, calling it quits and getting back together Instagram and I have finally decided to part ways. Or at least not to see each other anymore for an infinite amount of time. I remember why years ago I fell in love with it in the first place. The idea of what it was when we first met still lingers. Sharing the mundane joys of my 20-something life: perfectly arranged avocado toasts and Zara Sale hauls with my 50 friends. But we’ve changed and so has the world around us. I know it could never be the same and I wouldn’t want it to. I’m not that girl anymore and Instagram is not that app. Over the years it has turned into this never ending loop of people’s highlight reels. After seeing way too many perfect people with perfect lives that kind of all looked the same it started getting more and more shallow, utterly boring but at the same time increasingly addictive to watch.
So instead of letting it go, I tried to change it. I started intentionally curating my feed. I followed more diverse profiles, people with different backgrounds, ethnicities & body shapes. Away from the ever same bikini models to women you’d call “plus size”, hijabis, trans women, women with disabilities. I discovered and found a strong pull towards critical and leftist artists, thinkers, creators. Instagram opened up a a new world for me in which I felt seen, a world where migrant voices had a platform, had something to say, art to show, thoughts to share, businesses to promote. Suddenly there were people out there that shared similar life experiences to mine while all my life I believed they were non existent. It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to know my tribe was out there.
And so I thought I escaped it, the toxicity of Social Media. I had created my little woke bubble. While I also had this rule not to give in to the compulsive instinct of unfollowing people whose stories did not match my world view. I wanted to be exposed to as many perspectives as possible.
I didn’t want to seek moral high ground, I wanted to cultivate more empathy to those around me.
I wanted to know who these people were, these random Instagram connections you have with people you partied with a couple of times when you were 17 or had lunch with during your first internship 10 years ago. Why would this seemingly open minded, by now, mother I shared lip sticks with in the bathrooms of Vienna’s punk clubs now out of nowhere post transphobic rants on her Instagram? Or what made this other woman I loosely knew from a corporate canteen not vaccinate her baby and share her conspiracy theories with her two-hundred-something followers, me included? I didn’t want my algorithm to just confirm my biases. After all I didn’t want to become complacent.
Reflecting my interests and passions my feed had become this wild mix of posts about the latest The Row Runway Show, Anti-Capitalist Readings, Chemical Peels, Quotes on Attachment Theory, Decolonization Processes, AD Home Stories and every once in a while graphic content from disaster zones around the world. Well yes, welcome to my brain.
As you might have noticed the world is on fire and in-between all my curated aesthetically pleasing content I started seeing more and more suffering. Suffering that could be swiped away within a split second and replaced with “how to find the perfect button down”. And don’t get me wrong, I think it’s essential to find the perfect button down. But I find it massively disturbing to see dying children while I mindlessly scroll to self soothe after a long day, which is a topic for another day.
Lately it has been really hard for me to exist on Instagram. I notice how I self-censor. How when I share the good times I want to scream at the top of my lungs and share the gruesome images that my feed pushes onto me. Because I asked it to. I asked it to remind me of the life realities that are nothing like my own. I keep seeing wounded children, traumatized people, starved toddlers. Images I can’t get out of my head. And I scroll away. I look away because I can’t bear it. Are we all just going to continue searching for the perfect button down while children are being deliberately starved? Are we all just one meaningless post away from absolute nothingness?
Last month Instagram announced it would stop recommending political content. Turns out politics is a major buzzkill for Instagram users. While I can’t counter argue I wonder if this is the the way to / I want to go. If I really want to mute reality and stay in my carefree bubble. Social Media did make us more connected by breaking down geographical boundaries. This ability to bridge distance is what helped me see how complicit we all are. We shape the world around us and by choosing to look away we play our part in upholding a system that serves only few. And while Social Media has played a crucial role in social change and activism, it has also made me tired. Because at the end of the day Instagram is not built to make you grapple with ideas and deal in depth with topics. It’s built to make you addictively refresh your feed awaiting the next happy-hormone hit. Only that for me the waiting has been in vain lately.
Letters to Leyla is an attempt to change the way I consume media and engage in a more meaningful way with topics that are dear to my heart: art, culture, fashion, psychology, beauty and justice.
It’s an invite to subscribe to my thoughts & feelings.
If you want to read it all: the good, the bad, the ugly and you aren’t afraid to hold space for all the feelings of the emotion wheel in your life this newsletter is for you.
Every other Sunday in a letter to Leyla I’ll share what made me think and feel <insert emotion>.
PPS I’m new here. Let me know your favorite substacks plzzz