Since people haven’t been able to strut their personalities out in the world much, a lot of us are turning to making our mark online. As we suffer through this pandemic, everyone’s favorite visual medium — Instagram — is center stage for people to present themselves or who they want to be.
Okay, maybe Instagram was that before the coronavirus. But now it’s next level. While we’re all at home spending way too much time on our phones, many of us have upped our Instagram game. Not only are people posting more, but you may have also noticed (or even experienced it yourself) that people’s online personas have shifted entirely. Someone who has never bought flour before is now posting a step-by-step story on how to make no-knead artisan bread. An old friend from college now thinks she’s a fitness influencer with workouts you can’t stop watching but aren’t doing. And you’re worried about your once-cheery co-worker who posts 200-plus depressing memes in a day.
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The longer this quarantine has drawn out, the weirder things have gotten in the Insta-sphere. The other day, I watched a friend of a friend dress up his ferrets in formalwear and marry them on IG Live. Another friend posted a six-part face mask review while lip-syncing to the entire Footloose soundtrack, an endeavor that resulted in a minor injury. (Turns out she’s allergic to honey, and it was in the mask.)
We’re all just trying to get through this strange and often boring time, and sometimes that means putting on your wedding dress and a horse mask and heading up to the roof to perform a monologue from Center Stage for three viewers on Instagram, one being your husband, who is also recording you.
I don’t know what that particular episodes says about me, but here’s what these more common quarantine IG personalities say about you.
1. The obsessive sourdough starter chronicler
You tried to foster a dog, but all the shelters were cleared out, so you made your own pet yeast and named him Daryl.
2. The parent posting their baby being a baby
You can’t escape them, so you’ve resigned yourself to making your kid the next Insta-baby celebrity and taking the industry standard of 25% as their manager.
3. The mayor of mask-making town
The world is a dumpster fire, and you feel completely helpless, but this is the one thing that keeps you from crouching in a corner, rocking back and forth, and pulling your hair out one strand at a time.
4. The Mari Kondo-er
You’re spring-cleaning on overdrive, and you’re taking your followers with you, whether they care about you saying goodbye to your old Polly Pockets in your basement or not.
5. The pet whisperer
Your pet has always played a big part in your life, but now they’re literally the center of your universe. So they should be everyone else’s, too. I mean, just look at this cute fwoofy wittle face while he’s sleeping, eating, pooping, and licking his butt! Just, you know, don’t smother him in your need for physical contact.
6. The fitstagrammer
You’ve always considered yourself a fit person, but now you have the time to rack up a following with your 30-day Jam-Power-Mint routine where you basically just do average HIIT exercises to ’90s jams and drink mint tea afterward. Now if only you could convince your dog to keep his butthole out of the shot.
7. The throwback queen
You’re desperately trying to wash away this hellscape we’re all living in and replace it with simpler times, like that wedding you went to where you got blackout drunk and woke up in the reception barn wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. And you weren’t a bridesmaid.
8. The fixer-upper
You’ve got kids in your house, and you’re running out of ideas to keep them occupied. Plus, you bought waaay too many sponges on your last Costco run.
9. The new singer-songwriter
You’ve recently rediscovered your love of the guitar/banjo/synthesizer, and you need the world to hear every emo song you wrote in college and revamped for the pandemic struggle.
10. The newb TikTok-er
You miss the club (and Zumba classes) a little too much. Also, your Ritalin prescription ran out.
11. The unfettered meme-r
If something even remotely weird/funny/classic happens in your home or online, you simply must meme it for the masses. You are a ball of anxiety, and posting memes is your only release. I’m sure your followers chuckle at every single one of your 8,000 daily visual comments on the world.
12. The hiker
From you, we get daily gorgeous nature pics #ForeverHiking. You are stress hiking, and we get it — your parents have a summer home upstate.
13. The takeout foodie
You miss wining and dining so much that you’ve actually started setting up your takeout dinners on your wedding china and serving your partner stale red wine from a decanter with a cloth draped over your arm. Thank you for supporting businesses in their time of need, little foodie extrovert, but I think you’re bordering on masochism now.
14. The ‘Great British Baking Show’ hopeful
You dropped out of patisserie school to become an investment banker, and now you finally have your time back. It’s only taken you three weeks and four pounds of sugar to master the genoise sponge, but it was totally worth it when your second-favorite baking blogger hearted the final result.
15. The lover of motivational quotes
You’ve called yourself the designated therapist of your friend group more than once. Your presence is pretty much what it was pre-pandemic, only now your quotes are less about self-actualization and clean eating and more about unity and overcoming hardships.
16. The knitter/embroiderer/cross-stitcher
You will try absolutely anything to avoid panic-scrolling through the news, even if it means poking your fingers with needles a million times over.
17. The person who has tried every quarantine activity
You document every weird thing you’ve tried during isolation, from giving yourself dreadlocks to the infamous ghost pepper challenge, because you’re seriously lacking attention and those numbers of people watching make you feel seen.
18. The person who screenshots every Zoom call
You need this constant reminder for yourself, and the world, but mostly yourself, that you have lots of friends and they’ll definitely be there to hug and talk to in real life when this is all over.
19. The one who keeps it real
You: #SorryNotSorry my house is a mess and so am I. You’re no longer interested in keeping how your life has unraveled in quarantine a secret. In fact, you’ve leaned into the mess, especially on important work calls, because honestly, who cares anymore? This mindset has actually made you much more easygoing. Take that, therapist who said managing anxiety takes effort!
