What is Instagram?

Is mall, townhall, or shadows on the wall?

Townhall? Maybe Instagram is a gathering place, where humans and bots come together to voice an opinion or practice the art of listening. A forum where rules are provided for civil discourse. Rules like, Speak the truth or Spread no hate.

Mall? How long does that take to buy a pair of pants or a water fountain for your cat. A few minutes, if your card’s connect to your phone, which it is. Like what you see? Deals, codes, Black Friday Sale, season end sale, free returns. Arrives tomorrow. You just ordered pants.

Shadows on the wall? Plato asks us to imagine a cave. Inside the cave are people, prisoners, shackled to a wall. On the opposite wall, which acts as a kind of screen, moving shadows serve as the object of our prisoners’ attention. This, to the prisoners, is reality. They’ve no reason to believe — nor indeed could they ever have imagined — that, hidden behind them on a ledge, marionettes dance before fires. The shadows take various forms, shifting from one moment to the next: here, two humans laughing, now a dog cocking its head, a plate of pasta, the ocean, clean white shoes, two humans dancing, a pale child wrapped in a bloodied towel, a prank gone wrong, an anonymous quote: Paying attention is an act of love.