Browsing Instagram is like looking at the world through Amaro-tinted glasses. It’s tough to feel like your life matches up to a carefully curated collage of highlights from your 500 closest friends when you’re browsing your feed from your cubicle while lunching on a soggy sandwich. Here are some more realistic Instagram photos you’ll probably never see to remind you that life is warmer in Kelvin.
- Crying Selfie: We’ve all seen Lying on the Beach Selfie, Sexy Pouty Face Selfie and I’m Still in Bed But Somehow I Look Pretty Selfie, but what about the other moments you might not rush to share? So maybe you just got dumped (again) or all those hours you spent browsing Facebook at work caught up with you and you got fired. Crying Selfie (filtered somberly in Inkwell) shows us that life isn’t all sexy pouts and sunglasses.
- Pop Tarts for Dinner: The much-discussed Roast Chicken for Two at the NoMad may not photograph well but we’ve all seen it posted once or twice. Rubirosa’s Vodka Sauce pizza and your $8 sprinkle studded masterpiece at 16 Handles all garner tons of likes from hungry followers but we simply can’t eat gourmet every night of the week. Photographing your toaster pastry or that Lean Cuisine you may not have microwaved for long enough can remind you that too many Hudson-colored plates of rich food will only make you poor.
- My Muffintop: Instagram is rife with bikini photos filtered for optimal ab definition but those well-plated meals you posted last week might’ve packed on the pounds. Though filters can certainly brighten out a double chin or soften a stomach roll, the occasional un-cropped muffintop might help you to remember that you’re not the only one whose Rag & Bone skinny jeans won’t button for that #OOTD shot.
- Nosebleed seats: Court-side Instagrams inspire jealousy in sports fan followers and that close-up shot you got at the Lumineers show scored you plenty of likes, but try as you may you just can’t capture that poignant teardrop sliding down Taylor Swift’s cheek from a seat in the 300 section. If Ticketmaster misfortune banishes you to a section closer to the scoreboard than the action, relish the rare opportunity to watch the show with your own two eyes instead of through an iPhone camera lens.
- No Time for a Mani/Pedi: Novelty manicures are all the rage and the Popular Page often features nail art looks from Ombre to Glitter Gel with likes in the tens of thousands. The requisite vacation shot displaying your feet in the sand requires a pedicure and whether in poor-taste or not, the like-magnet engagement ring photo calls for polished nails. But you have a busy life and a lot of plastic wrapped jars of pickles to open and price stickers to scrape off of the bottoms of your new shoes so until chipped nails are a fashion trend, use the Tilt-Shift feature to soften those ragged cuticles.
- Day in Bed: Photos geotagged at the MoMA, a screenshotted map of someone’s 8.2 mile run along the river, and yet another photo of that “Imagine” memorial in Central Park might make you feel like a bum when you just can’t get out of bed, but a little square photo of a Sandra Bullock movie on your blurred out TV screen with your everything-bagel-seeded comforter in the foreground serves as a reminder that sometimes the #viewfrom your pillow is what you really need.
- Cheap Liquor: Two-Buck Chuck won’t break the bank but it also won’t help you break 25 likes on Instagram. Ubiquitous photos of scantily clad women presenting sparkler-topped bottles of Cristal in the club or a magnum of Patron chilling in a bucket of ice might make you think that getting drunk is more fun when your bottle-service liquor costs more than your iPhone 5. But drunk is drunk, and no matter which spirit got you there you should probably just focus on not losing another smartphone.
- Divorce Papers: It seems like every weekend a new wedding hashtag pops up on our feeds and although we wish #TheMillersWedding the very best of everything, not everyone but you is living happily ever after. It’s easy to get down on yourself when you’re single in an age where wedded bliss looks even more blissful in Brannan but life isn’t all fairytale nuptials—in reality life doesn’t always work out in ways you’d rush to share on social media.
