One of my favorite local restaurant has an Instagram problem. The absolute entirety to their outreach and marketing is Instagram, and not for a good competitive or business reason, it’s simply that they can’t imagine that there are people who don’t spend all their time in it, much less people who don’t use it at all.

It reminds me of a neighborhood in my city like Brooklyn where they are so deep in their own subculture, they never leave. It’s like the joke: how to people from Brooklyn like Manhattan, and the answer is they’ve never heard of it. There’s something about life in some places that are so self-involved that they can’t leave and can’t see beyond it. I think Instagram like a drug — when you’re in it, there’s no way to see it, but when you’re out of it, it’s crystal clear.

The frustrating part is I like this restaurant a lot. I want it to succeed. But I think their over reliance on Instagram is going to be their downfall. Why?

Facebook has history lesson: who’s even on Facebook anymore? Instagram is already overrun with 1000 influencers with perfect teeth and little to say, so the signal to noise ratio is getting worse. Add in their attempt to push you to Reels, their Tiktok copy, and push “suggested stories” on your feed that you have to silence every 30 days, and it’s becoming onerous for anyone who’s not there to watch style tips for perfect teeth. What used to feel natural and real now feels forced and fake.

Facebook has a second history lesson for for businesses and organizations — Facebook itself created Facebook Pages intended to allow organizations and businesses to connect and post things. At first it was great, people would follow the business and get updates. But Facebook’s plan was to get between the businesses and the people who electively followed them — a shakedown that made business pay to let their current followers see their current posts. It’s like an email provider telling Zappos and West Elm that the only way they send the email through is if they also get paid, which come to think of it I wonder why they haven’t done that yet. So Facebook is great and suddenly it’s useless unless you have the budget to pay them.

Instagram is really bad a time, too. I don’t know how many times I saw a concert or special menu posted only to find out it was 2 days ago. Business who want to pay them of course can get their stuff in front of people at the right time, but without throwing money the posts just get delayed to the point of unusability. Instagram, being owned by Facebook / Meta, continues to find find a way between businesses and their audiences.

Another new local coffee shop takes it a step beyond: it’s so steeped in online culture, their entire persona is wrapped in it. Their drinks are named after memes and their signage is basically hashtags personified. Being directly across the street from a large local coffee chain could certainly be advantageous, but it took them 3 months to put up a menu in a window in the slight chance that someone might want to know what they serve.

It seemed they even took the “Top Trick for Engagement on Social Media”, which is to put a pretty girl on the first post and did it IRL… most days the bored staff sat in the front windows as if to be seen. So maybe I’m the one who’s been online too long here, but it is pretty funny to see a pretty pouting woman in the window longingly looking at people pass by. But maybe that’s when they noticed everyone going across the street had no idea what this place had and put up a menu! Either way, there’s a business downside to staring at your screens too long. You might not notice Manhattan.