In a recent interview published in EL PAÍS, the philosopher Margot Rot confessed that she would never show anyone her search history because there is all of “her soul, her psyche.”
Paying attention to this analogy, it is possible that we are crossing the limit of the personal when asking Luján, a 25-year-old from Malaga, what is inside her Instagram archive.
“I have a lot to answer for!
You talk to someone who has been using Instagram since 2013, I have thousands of photos archived.
Give me a moment and I will answer you,” she writes on WhatsApp.
Social networks facilitate the creation, modification and selective deletion of our digital identity.
Often, detaching from the past begins with deleting certain posts on our profiles on these platforms, and in more radical situations, even deleting the profile altogether.
This last trend has recently become popular, adopted by artists such as Bad Bunny, Quevedo, C. Tangana and Justin Timberlake.
However, Instagram is not the only platform where users manipulate their digital biographical footprint.
Nowadays, there is hardly a more vivid representation of the end of a relationship than when, without being able to do anything about it, we watch the photo of our former partner slowly descend in the WhatsApp stream, buried under an avalanche of inconsequential conversations.
Some choose to archive the chat, with the risk of missing an eventual message from that person.
Others decide to delete it completely, and there are those who finally decide to block the number.
When examining his personal archive on Instagram, where he stores the publications that he has removed from his public profile, Luján discovers that he has approximately 200 photographs.
She identifies as an active user on the platform, with a predominant focus on musical content.
“Above all I have found photos of records, poor quality videos of concerts, ticket tickets;
simply me
flexing
[showing off] all the music I consumed,” she explains in a WhatsApp audio.
Although, of course, there is more that has ended up in her file.
”To begin with, the Instagram of 2013 has nothing to do with the current one,” she maintains.
“Initially it was a fairly basic application, limited to sharing posts with
hashtags
and little else.”
In her opinion, users previously tended to post less elaborate photos, lacking deep meaning.
"It was a bit: 'Am I drinking a ColaCao?' Well, I guess I'm having a ColaCao for breakfast, just because."
Over time, Luján began to disassociate himself from many of these photographs in search of a neater, more aesthetic and coherent profile.
“I just found a photo I posted a thousand years ago, which is simply my feet inside a camping tent.
In 2014, this seemed like a good idea to me.
Now I wouldn't upload it.”
In addition, Luján has been eliminating people from his Instagram profile who are no longer part of his life.
“After 10 years on the Internet, there are many people with whom I no longer maintain a relationship,” he explains.
Although some of these relationships have ended, he does not contemplate the definitive deletion of these photos.
They are people who have passed through my life and I think: 'Well, there they are.'
This includes his ex-partner, who he broke up with a few months ago.
“Since I don't come from a shady or super toxic relationship, and he hasn't done anything to make me have any hatred or resentment towards him, I didn't feel the need to erase him from my life.
So I filed it away because he is someone I am very fond of.
I don't think I'll post them again.
But I have them there, as a souvenir.
"I think I would regret it if I deleted them."
Bad Bunny has 46 million followers on Instagram.
The strategy of the stars
In the realm of artists and celebrities, digital erasure has become popular, often as a
marketing strategy.
A recent and notable example is Bad Bunny, one of the most listened to artists on Spotify, who has just deleted all his posts from Instagram, where he has 46 million followers, and has changed his username to Benito, as his real name is. .
For the peace of mind of his fans, a week ago he uploaded a photo in which he was seen calmly eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast, accompanied by a notable wad of bills.
And a few days ago he shared a second post.
It is not the first time that El Conejo chooses to start over on social networks.
Two years ago, she welcomed 2022 by deleting all content from his official profile on this platform, and in 2020, she announced his departure with a laconic “Bye, I'm gone,” in an absence that lasted three months.
This digital deletion strategy, which had one of its great precursors in the singer Maluma, has also been recently adopted by Justin Timberlake, or the Canarian artist Quevedo, who deleted all the publications from his account, complying with what he had hinted at in one of his songs,
Now what:
“2021 sow, 2022 gather, 2023 crown, 2024 disappear.”
C. Tangana did exactly the same thing just before becoming El Madrileño.
The list is very long, and could go on to include Dua Lipa, who left his Instagram account without posts last year, as well as singers Marc Anthony and Liam Payne.
Amel Fernández, social media specialist and GPT Chat expert, explains that this action seeks to “generate
hype.”
According to Fernández, what these artists seek is to capture the attention of the moment, create suspense and promote talk about them to achieve a media renaissance.
This approach not only attracts attention and reach, but is also meticulously planned, right down to the exact moment of return.
Despite being a widely imitated strategy, Fernández affirms that it is still effective, since “everything that challenges the user's usual perception continues to work.”
Furthermore, he does not rule out that, on many occasions, this digital transformation may also be driven by emotional motivations or by a moment of saturation in the use of social networks.
“During the pandemic, many content creators suffered the consequences of confinement, their profiles were deleted, and in many cases, they never reopened them,” he details.
Getting older, also on Instagram
A common motivation for many users to delete or archive large portions of their social media posts is the desire to project a more professional image.
This was the case of Sara González, a 26-year-old interior designer, who, at the end of last summer, archived the more than two hundred publications that she had on her profile.
This change coincided with the opening of her own interior design studio.
“My goal was to associate my personal brand with the name of my company,” she explains.
Sara realized that some photos were not appropriate to share in a professional context.
“I realized I had a lot of naked photos,” she recalls candidly.
“Oh, and because I had a boob job.
“She had a lot of photos in which the change was very noticeable, and she didn't want them to be seen.”
Younger generations, even pre-Z, show a different relationship with social media posts.
“There is a growing inclination towards ephemeral publications, such as
stories
, to the detriment of permanent publications in the
feed
.
This reflects a preference for immediacy and spontaneity in digital communication,” explains Amel Fernández.
The expert adds: “This trend seems to have been initially driven by
influencers
and public figures who began to maintain their accounts with zero posts in the
feed.”
This reflects a shift in the perception of permanence in the digital world, where users may prefer to leave a lighter, more controlled digital footprint.
It is curious that the Instagram generation was saved from the “collective trauma” caused by the great digital erasure of Tuenti in 2016, when the popular Spanish social network closed permanently.
Founded in 2006, Tuenti became one of the most used platforms in Spain, especially among young people.
During its peak, it amassed millions of users, with a peak of around 15 million active accounts.
With its closure, all data stored on the platform, including photos, messages and user profiles, was lost.
Although the social network offered a period to recover those photos, many users did not do so in time.
Currently, there are pages with detailed instructions to recover said content;
However, these processes generally involve contacting administrators and appealing to data protection and privacy laws through Telefónica.
Despite these efforts, for many, that part of their lives will likely only linger in their memories.
Instagram users have decided that it is better for them to take the initiative.
Just in case.
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