The Politics of the Instagram Story

A couple of years ago, an old flame of mine had the nerve to start dating a new woman. He had posted a photo with her on Instagram; they were wrapped around each other, smiling, with a cheeky caption that I took to be some sort of lovers’ inside joke. I clicked on her username. She had a public Instagram account, so I was free to peruse her photos until I reached her high-school graduation, or until I made myself cry, whichever came first. I noticed she’d posted an Instagram story that day. It was the only bit of content I couldn’t access without revealing myself—users can see a list of everyone who opens their stories. So I did what any sane woman would do. I logged back in to my dead dog’s Instagram account and looked. “Hidden lurkers,” as one TikTok user put it, are either in luck or damned: Instagram announced earlier this month that it will be rolling out a new paid subscription called Instagram Plus. For only $3.99 a month, users can access a slew of dismal new features, including the ability to “preview stories without appearing on the viewer list,” as the ads say. Other features include an option to shirk the burdens of online popularity by searching your story viewers for a specific person, instead of scrolling through all the names you don’t actually care about; insights into how many times people rewatched your story; and “story extend,” which allows you to set a story to expire in 48 hours as opposed to the usual 24, in case that special someone hasn’t viewed it yet.All of this is “designed to give you more of what you love about Instagram,” the app claims, helping you “express yourself, connect deeper with friends, and customize your experience.” If what you love is the ability to more conveniently keep tabs on crushes or enemies, by which I mean torture yourself, then Instagram nailed it. Instagram Plus is social media’s newest low—a company preying on our most pathetic impulses, for the price of a small iced coffee.Instagram Plus isn’t just a sign of