Get your half-baked social media strategy off my followers list.

This morning I woke up, but my brain was still in Park. As I sat there trying to process information (the day of the week, the time of the day, is it a work day or non-work day, where is the cat), my phone screen flashed. I leaned over to pick it up wondering if this was it, the big announcement of the Cheeto’s Apocalypse. Nah, it was just a follower notification from Instagram.

It read, “Furniture Store in Linden NJ (roomandhome_linden) started following you.” So maybe the Earth isn’t going to end today, but this didn’t make me feel any better. A furniture store in BFE, nowhere near my constant proximity, decided to join around a thousand humans in following the photos I upload to Instagram. My brain finally started waking up, and it did not like receiving this information either.

Furniture stores are not supposed to follow people. At the very least, they should follow people who might, you know, possibly buy something from them. I don’t know what idiot runs social media for Room & Home in Linden, New Jersey but they’re Interneting wrong. And in the process, mucking up my experience which is intended to share photos with friends, family, people I admire, and other humans who appreciate my photography.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown detached from Instagram in the last couple of months. It has devolved into Facebook Jr. with more lame advertising and social media plans.

Perhaps yesterday’s announcement of Flickr’s acquisition by SmugMug (both companies that take photography more seriously) comes as a bit of serendipity. It feels like a great time to move to a platform that earns its revenue through selling memberships and in doing so provide a much better experience.

One downside is potentially not having a larger audience to share my work. Another is that Flickr got rid of their plugin that enabled me to automagically add photos to left column of this site, but if this move means never having to wake up to learn that some dipshit furniture store is portending to be a fan of my work, then I’m on the right path.