Instagram changed and I don't like it.

    Instagram is a fun app to scroll through photos done by professionals, celebrities, friends, and family. It had a clean design where all photos were in a square crop and had equal real estate on the screen. This was a constraint but just like how Vine's six second constraint in video allowed for a whole new form of entertainment the square ratio constraint allowed Instagram to have a feed that was organized and well kept. This worked well since Instagram was primarily a social media platform on most smartphones that focused on photos. Each social media platform has it's advantages and disadvantages, but Instagram really shined through it's simple clean cut design. Yes only square photos could be posted but that made the explore page show you all the photos at their full instead something like a cropped thumbnail, and the same applies to any user's profile showing a preview of all their posted photos. But slowly Instagram was changing, some updates for the better and some for the worst. The subtle updates to the explore tab made it easier to see more content, and the addition of video at first felt like a last minute update to go against Vine but with the restriction of 15 second videos it fits the feeling of how Twitter also allows for short videos to be posted. Twitter is for short to the point 140 character thoughts, with maybe pictures and short videos. So with Instagram having at most 15 second videos along with a quick glance with photos doesn't seem ideal but it works.

SO HERE'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

    Instagram just introduce an update that may seem minor but throws the whole balance of the social media platform off. The restriction of photos only fitting a 1:1 ratio is gone. Now any photo regardless the ratio can be uploaded and the photo is just adjusted to fit the screen. Taking away this restriction is essentially taking away any fence between lions and zebras resulting in chaos or at least in this case, an ugly feed to scroll through favoring large portrait photos over any landscape ones. With the restriction gone there's no reason to upload a photo in square ratio anymore, it doesn't take up as much real estate as a vertical photo and that just looks better because the lack of white space on the phone screen. With every photo fitting that 1:1 ratio all photos had equal space around them so when scrolling through the feed on any phone regardless of how large it is it felt like it belonged and deserved as much as a glance from the eyes as any other. However now with this new update there is an unfair balance of how much space a photo takes on a screen and that all depends on the ratio it's uploaded as. Here's an example.

    Shown above are three photos, one in a square ratio, one uploaded as a landscape shot, and one uploaded as a full vertical shot. This is essentially the new feed, a mix and match of different ratios from 0-100. The square ratio worked so well because while scrolling through the feed everything felt equal, the only factor to judge on a photo is what the photo was of. Now the chance of getting a glance from scrolling through the feed isn't about the actual photo but rather if the photo was large enough to capture the attention of the user! There's no longer a reason to upload in any other ratio besides the largest vertical one. It would have been fine if that was the restriction for all photos but it isn't. There is essentially no reason to upload a landscape photo. Even if it is an amazing photo the resolution would have to shrink just because 100% of phones focus on the length rather than the height, once again showing why a portrait photo is favored now on Instagram over any other ratio. 

    Is there anything to do against this update? No probably not. Will I continue to use instagram? Yea probably. Will I only post vertical photos now? idk prob fam if it has a higher chance of getting likes hell yea im bout.