I’m constantly in awe of how terrible Instagram has gotten since it started trying to copy TikTok. Every day I’m bombarded with video Reels from accounts I never followed, and so much of its is just so god awful.

Many of these Reels fit within a few categories:

1. Stolen content: These are what’s often referred to as “meme” accounts. They don’t actually create their own videos, they just aggregate them from elsewhere. These videos can sometimes be entertaining, but because they’re all stealing from the same sources, you often end up seeing the same aggregated video over and over again.

2. Really bad sketch comedy: Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot of good sketch comedy on the internet, but I’m struck by how bad the stuff is that ends up in my Instagram feed. Usually these are accounts that just create hundreds of iterations of the exact same joke, and what starts out as mildly amusing quickly becomes just downright annoying after you’ve seen the fifth iteration of the same joke.

3. “Hot girl videos”: Sorry, I don’t have a better label for these. In these videos, nothing interesting or creative is actually happening — in fact, many are only a few seconds long — but it’s obvious that the Instagram algorithm has latched onto them because they feature an attractive woman and lots of straight males have clicked on them. It’s gotta be some of the least creative content I’ve ever been force-fed on the internet.

   Cory Doctorow has written about the “enshitification” that eventually rots all major internet platforms, and I think it’s safe to say that Instagram is in Late Stage Enshitification. I rarely feel good about myself after opening the app.