I’ve been away from Instagram lately.
Not because I ran out of things to create. If anything, I’m creating more than ever. I just reached a point where I needed some distance from a platform that had started taking more from me emotionally than I was getting back from it.
And stepping away taught me something I wasn’t expecting.
It made me think about friendship.
For a long time, I’ve been part of a fairly close-knit community of AI creators. We comment on each other’s posts. We send DMs. We collaborate. We celebrate milestones. We joke with each other. We call each other friends.
Some of these are people I’ve interacted with almost every day for years.
So when I stopped posting, part of me wondered who would notice.
Eventually I put up a short note saying that I wouldn’t be on Instagram for the foreseeable future and wished everyone well.
A handful of people responded. Mostly quick reactions and emojis.
Many didn’t.
And I’ll admit it hurt.
I found myself thinking, Really? After all this time?
If someone I considered a friend suddenly disappeared from a place where I was accustomed to seeing them every day, I think I would wonder if they were okay. I would probably reach out.
So when that didn’t happen in the way I expected, my first reaction was disappointment.
But I’ve had some time to think about it, and I don’t think the lesson is as simple as, “Those people were never really my friends.”
I think it’s more complicated than that.
Maybe there are different kinds of friendship
Social media creates a strange kind of closeness.
You can know someone’s creative style. Their favorite poses. Their sense of humor. Their struggles with the algorithm. You can celebrate when they reach a milestone and commiserate when a post gets buried.
You can interact with someone almost every day.
And that can feel remarkably intimate.
But how much of that relationship exists because you’re both standing in the same digital room every day?
I’ve started thinking about creator friendships a little like friendships at work.
You can genuinely care about the person sitting beside you every day. You laugh together, share stories and look forward to seeing them. Then one of you leaves the company and suddenly the structure that brought you together disappears.
Sometimes the friendship follows you out the door.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
That doesn’t necessarily mean what existed before was fake.
Maybe it simply tells you what kind of relationship it was.
I also learned not to assume what silence means
This was probably the most important part for me.
There was someone whose silence particularly bothered me. Rather than continuing to wonder about it, I finally reached out and asked.
I learned that my interpretation had been completely different from theirs.
I had thought:
If you cared about me, why didn’t you check on me?
They had essentially thought:
I care about you, so I’m giving you the space I think you’re asking for.
They had noticed my absence. They had thought about me. They simply interpreted my withdrawal differently than I did.
We talked.
And I’m very glad we did.
It reminded me how dangerous it can be to write the other person’s half of a conversation in our own heads.
At the same time, there are other relationships in my life that never required that question.
There are people who have been there quietly and consistently, away from Instagram and away from public comments. People I talk to privately. People who don’t care whether I posted something that day or whether it performed well. People who simply care how I’m doing.
Those relationships feel different.
And I’ve learned to appreciate that difference.
Maybe I need to be a little more guarded
Not colder.
Not cynical.
And certainly not unfriendly.
I still want to support other creators. I still want to laugh with people, collaborate, compliment someone’s beautiful work and celebrate when something wonderful happens for them.
But maybe I don’t need to give every online relationship the emotional weight of a close friendship.
Maybe someone can be a wonderful creator friend without necessarily being a close personal friend.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
The mistake may have been expecting those two things to mean the same thing.
Going forward, I think I want to be slower about deciding who gets into that inner circle.
Not because people need to prove themselves to me.
But because friendship, at least the kind that matters deeply to me, is something that exists when there isn’t a post underneath it.
It’s the message when there’s nothing to promote.
It’s someone asking how you’re doing when nobody else can see them asking.
It’s talking about things that have absolutely nothing to do with reach, followers, algorithms or content.
It’s being able to disappear from the feed without disappearing from someone’s life.
I'm still figuring all of this out
Maybe that’s what this break from Instagram is becoming for me.
I originally thought I was stepping away from an algorithm.
Instead, I’ve found myself reconsidering what parts of social media I actually miss.
I miss creating.
I miss some people.
I don’t particularly miss watching numbers.
I don’t miss wondering whether something I love will please an algorithm.
And I don’t miss feeling obligated to maintain hundreds of little social connections simply because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re a creator.
I’m beginning to think I want to spend more of my energy on the creative side of being a creator and be a little more selective with the social side.
I’ll still be warm. I’ll still cheer people on. I’ll still make connections.
I’ll just try to remember that a comment section can create familiarity without necessarily creating intimacy.
And when I do find someone who remains after the likes, posts and algorithms disappear?
I’ll know to treasure them.
Because maybe the best way to find out which connections are real isn’t to look at who shows up underneath your latest post.
It’s to notice who is still there when there isn’t one.
— Lairissa
