Sometimes you just need a pointless little project to get through the days.
I have an Instagram account. I’ve never actually posted anything to it because I have enough social media presence in my life without it and I’m not entirely sure what I would put there anyway, but it is a fun little account to lurk on. Mostly I follow accounts from friends and family, vintage photography, random musicians and Bake Off contestants, and meme pages because they amuse me, and whenever I find something that seems worth saving I’ll check the little ribbon-shaped box that tells Instagram to put it in my Saved folder.
I’ve been doing that for a while now, in fact, and I’ve reached the point where I no longer remember what’s there. This can be annoying when I come up on a situation where I think, “I have just the perfect meme/photo/whatever for that!” and then I can’t find it because there’s no search feature that I’ve ever noticed.
So I’ve decided to go through all of my saved images and download them onto my computer so I can organize them and find them when I want to do so. And yes, I am fully aware of how that sounds. Thanks for noticing.
I like this project because it has nothing at all to do with the current maelstrom of American politics. It is a nice break, and if it is ultimately kind of a nonsensical thing to do then, well, we need those now and then. I’m finding all sorts of things that I’d forgotten about and that makes me happy, so perhaps it’s not such a pointless project after all.
The thing about Instagram is that you can’t actually download anything from it – you have to screenshot anything you want to save – and this in turn means you have to name every file. My general plan has been to try to name things the way I think I’d search for them in the future – “If I wanted to find this again, how would I look it up?” And so far, I have to say, I’m doing a pretty good job of this. I’ve been saving those images for a long time now, and there are a lot of duplicates from when I’d forgotten I’d already saved something, and very often I go to put something in one of the various folders where I’m saving them and I get a notice that says “You already have a file with that exact seven-word phrase as its title, moron” although the last word is usually more implied than stated. Usually. And I go and check and, yep, there it is. I find this reassuring in a vague sort of way. That is indeed how I’d look for that image.
And yes, there are folders. Of course there are. Anyone who would embark on this sort of project is naturally going to have folders to put things in. I wrote a dissertation once. If that process teaches you anything it is that most of life is just organizing information. Also, that having a niche interest can be monetized for certain values of money that do not include a lot of it, but that’s a separate issue.
The biggest folder, of course, is the one that has all the images that I found funny because that was the whole purpose behind all this. I’ve trained Instagram’s little algorithm to show me mostly things that would fit into this category as well, so it’s kind of self-fulfilling. So I often find myself cackling maniacally over something that I’d forgotten about that I’m probably the only person in a fifty mile radius who finds it amusing but I’m okay with that.
This, for example:
I have an Instagram account. I’ve never actually posted anything to it because I have enough social media presence in my life without it and I’m not entirely sure what I would put there anyway, but it is a fun little account to lurk on. Mostly I follow accounts from friends and family, vintage photography, random musicians and Bake Off contestants, and meme pages because they amuse me, and whenever I find something that seems worth saving I’ll check the little ribbon-shaped box that tells Instagram to put it in my Saved folder.
I’ve been doing that for a while now, in fact, and I’ve reached the point where I no longer remember what’s there. This can be annoying when I come up on a situation where I think, “I have just the perfect meme/photo/whatever for that!” and then I can’t find it because there’s no search feature that I’ve ever noticed.
So I’ve decided to go through all of my saved images and download them onto my computer so I can organize them and find them when I want to do so. And yes, I am fully aware of how that sounds. Thanks for noticing.
I like this project because it has nothing at all to do with the current maelstrom of American politics. It is a nice break, and if it is ultimately kind of a nonsensical thing to do then, well, we need those now and then. I’m finding all sorts of things that I’d forgotten about and that makes me happy, so perhaps it’s not such a pointless project after all.
The thing about Instagram is that you can’t actually download anything from it – you have to screenshot anything you want to save – and this in turn means you have to name every file. My general plan has been to try to name things the way I think I’d search for them in the future – “If I wanted to find this again, how would I look it up?” And so far, I have to say, I’m doing a pretty good job of this. I’ve been saving those images for a long time now, and there are a lot of duplicates from when I’d forgotten I’d already saved something, and very often I go to put something in one of the various folders where I’m saving them and I get a notice that says “You already have a file with that exact seven-word phrase as its title, moron” although the last word is usually more implied than stated. Usually. And I go and check and, yep, there it is. I find this reassuring in a vague sort of way. That is indeed how I’d look for that image.
And yes, there are folders. Of course there are. Anyone who would embark on this sort of project is naturally going to have folders to put things in. I wrote a dissertation once. If that process teaches you anything it is that most of life is just organizing information. Also, that having a niche interest can be monetized for certain values of money that do not include a lot of it, but that’s a separate issue.
The biggest folder, of course, is the one that has all the images that I found funny because that was the whole purpose behind all this. I’ve trained Instagram’s little algorithm to show me mostly things that would fit into this category as well, so it’s kind of self-fulfilling. So I often find myself cackling maniacally over something that I’d forgotten about that I’m probably the only person in a fifty mile radius who finds it amusing but I’m okay with that.
This, for example:
Or any of these:
There’s another folder for things that I found thought-provoking. Most of them are rather long so I’m not going to put them in here, but some are fairly concise.
Like this one:
Or these:
I’ve also saved a whole pile of images that I might use for the PowerPoint slides for classes I teach, or simply because I like old photos.
I just missed being able to put this one into the slides for the Great Depression. I do mention the Dust Bowl, but I don’t think students really grasp what that meant until they see it.
Sometimes the photos are illuminating in a historical way.
And sometimes I like them because they’re just a little absurd and one of the things that students forget very easily is that historical people were just people and they weren’t always serious and they didn’t always do serious things.
I’ve got another folder for historical memes that I might, perhaps, put at the end of the exams I give because you need something funny to get through an exam. Most of the images in that folder are not really the sorts of things I can use without somebody getting all frowny-face at me in a humorless legal sort of way, but I can amuse myself anyway. These I might actually use someday.
And there’s a folder just for photographs that I found interesting for no other reason than I found them interesting. This one is clearly a composite image, but it is striking nonetheless.
We all need our projects.
2 comments:
"Sometimes you just need a pointless little project to get through the days."
I read that and almost stopped right there. That is the perfectly concise description of my present reality.
"Most of the images in that folder are not really the sorts of things I can use without somebody getting all frowny-face at me in a humorless legal sort of way, but I can amuse myself anyway."
Amuse yourself by posting them here! I doubt anyone will get all frowny-face at you here - and even if they do, tell them to re-read the left sidebar. Alternatively, you could divide the folder up into manageable bundles and email them to me. You could certainly categorize that as a pointless little sub-project.
On an entirely unrelated note: Sue underwent arthroscopic surgery on her right shoulder this morning to address a possible torn rotator cuff. This is the second time for that shoulder. Turned out she had a foreign object in there: a suture from the first surgery that somehow failed to dissolve. The doctor would not commit to whether that was the source of her pain or the osteoarthritis that is now appearing in that joint. It's not the years; it's the mileage.
Fun times.
Lucy
I hope Sue is recovering well! Please pass along my best to her!
And I'm not surprised the doctor wouldn't commit to anything, as that opens up a whole can of Lawsuit if he does. Such is the world we live in. Me, I can get arthritis without any surgery at all! because I'm special that way. ;)
It might be a worthwhile thing to post some of them here, just to even out the political ones. Could also send some along by email. We'll see! I'm caught up in the archives through last October, so I've almost got this project sorted and will need another one to survive. Genealogy also beckons, but as we both know that's an abyss that takes a while to crawl back out of once you dive into it.
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