Quarantine Instagram Feeds: How to Post despite boredom, but still show new photos: the glorious world of Picsart, Vsco, and more!

    So, we’re still here, alive, in quarantine, and probably bored. A generation of young adults forlornly peering out our windows, wondering when we’ll be back to our VSCO lifestyles, running among the streets of frat row, and back to participating in the walks of shame.

     Haha, kidding. Mostly. 

    Even so, there's not much to do right now, safely, at least. If you’re social distancing correctly, you’re probably spending a lot of time in bed, under the covers, and on social media. Despite all this spare time, you're probably also finding yourself with little to post.

    Well, here’s my 2 cents: let’s make Instagram casual again!

    I know, I know, this seems horrifying. Gone are those days we spent in sixth grade, uploading photos of our best friend “caught off guard," as well as our #MCM & #WCW posts.

    And, tbh, maybe those trends should stay in the closet. Buuuuut, that doesn’t mean we can’t bring back the fun-loving and spontaneous posting methods that we sporadically brought to our feeds back in the day.

    Your Instagram page is yours, after all. It's interesting that I have to remind myself of that, constantly. It feels like society owns my feed and dictates what I post. But, back to my 2 cents:

    We live in the 21st century, where the amount of likes one has is defining and one’s follower count grants one status in this world, but who even cares?

    We are LIVING through a global pandemic. Um, this doesn’t happen a lot, folks. Just in case you didn’t pay a lot of attention in history class. This is a massive deal. This is going to change the way the world works for centuries to come. So why not change your social media habits with it? Small changes can lead to BIG results.

    I for one, used to have horrible social media anxiety. I would literally, practically have a panic attack each time I found the courage to post on Instagram. Usually it ended up with me taking it down, collapsing into bed, and “oh-woe-is-me-ing” the rest of the night. 

Screw that. This past earth day, my feed was filled with hundreds of glorious photos, taken from years prior to the posting date. They were casual, filled with inspiring greenery, and most importantly:

posted out of love and respect for themselves and the beautiful earth we live on.

    They were amazing. Sure, not every post got a plethora of likes, but at the end of the day, that's not what counts. It only matters if you believe it does. So have some fun with editing, and fill your feed with bright and colorful pictures to celebrate you during these dark times.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with these apps, I don't know much about them, and I know absolutely NOTHING about editing. I'm actually a horrible artist. So if I can do these little edits, so can you!

Using Picsart for Instagram: Picsart is an amazing photo editing app, where you can create collages, add little pictures and/or effects, and more! I'm sure you've heard of it, or used it at some point in your life, but consider re-downloaded in for Quarantine to add some effects to your photos! Whether you're posting a simple one on VSCO, or a full photo shoot on Instagram, there's lots of ways to make your pictures unique.

    Mine are below! They are edited with the simplest tools, and you do NOT need to get the membership for them! All I used was the cutout tool to splice out the original backgrounds, and then searched in the "Stickers" tool for things that I thought matched the theme of that picture. As for my various backgrounds, I just screen-shotted and cropped them from Pinterest!

 

    As for VSCO, which typically has a way more formal and aesthetic theme, I just used VSCO to edit the picture, downloaded it, then went back to Picsart. From here, I chose an aesthetic sticker that I felt matched the mood of the picture, and then went back to VSCO and posted it! The results turned out like this:

It's a small, casual thing. Just do it!