You know, you don't just take, import, slowly curate, sit on, hang out with, critique, and then upload 43 photos that you took over the past month or so without questioning the point of what you're doing.

I used to use Flickr. Pretty heavily. And I posted to a lot of groups, and I tracked what got views, etc. I like Flickr. But it never really stuck. Flickr (or at least my interaction with it) depended on developing new networks. None of my friends really used it, and the way I generated views was by interacting with other users. So, time passed, and eventually I ended up on Instagram.

Instagram offers a way to interact with people I care about. But the story that's told within the app is a purely collaborative one. It's some weird average of the perspectives of the people that I follow, whose individual profiles I rarely - if ever - look at. And I'm happy being a part of a larger narrative, but I also want to create one of my own. One that I curate, and that I'm fully responsible for.

Which is to say: Instagram is great, but the story doesn't belong to any individual user.

I'm not sure of a product that allows an individual user to create a story like a traditional blog does. Perhaps Tumblr does, but I always used it as something between Instagram and an RSS reader - but with a powerful reblogging function built in.

Regardless, it's clear to me that I'm operating in a world that's a few years old. If anyone has any ideas for how I should be modernizing, I'm all ears.