Instagram has an unlimited amount of ability to intrigue the masses. Insta, as some call it, has been around for a few years now. This app has been downloaded onto every smart product I own, and also the smart products of many others around the world. Instagram highlights a lot of the brainwashing effects of social media at this day in time and also has given way for many other apps to become very popular in its shadow. Instagram on its own is styled very skillfully in color and accessibility, as well as being able to use them in sync with other applications and social media brands. Not only does this very well known brand use specially formulated ways to drag people into the abyss that is technology for hours on end, but people have made a living off of this app. People have also become famous off of something so minuscule. “Like my pic,” a common phrase used by every stereotypical sorority girl I know, just shows our need for attention even without physical or emotional attachment to a person. I know on my own Insta page I have people who follow me and I don’t follow them back just to perfect the so called “ratio.” All of these unnecessary things we have in our lives to distract us from our everyday hustle and bustle.

First things first, Instagram creators: kudos to you people for creating something so widely used throughout much of the world today, but I know this whole color scheme, like process wasn’t a mistake and I know you hired people for the specific job of picking out the shape of the like button. Sad to say that in this time in our lives, the color of an application background is more relevant than the leader of our country, but hey welcome to 2016, sit down and scroll a while. Instagram was made with a blue upper and lower section, and a white center. The fonts used are so soothing and hipster that the app makes you fell cooler every time that you use it. It even has a private function if you want to be more exclusive. LOL. In between this blank canvas of nothingness is where your freak flag can fly freely. Post a picture of your naked feline jumping from a microwave into space, we don’t care (and don’t think I haven’t seen that). As long as you aren’t breaking any of the Instagram bylaws, or any other laws for that matter, anyone can post anything they want. But don’t think that if you want a bunch of followers and a “hella” lot of likes that you don’t have to precisely post and filter and caption everything to perfection.

Filters, let’s talk about them for a while. Want to make you face look tan, place the Ludwig filter on it and bam, you’re a bronze beauty. Going for a subtle artsy look? Rise is the filter for you. But hey, if the twenty-three filters that are on the main page are not good enough for you, go ahead and personalize it with the new Insta update, where you can edit things such as brightness or structure, or even contrast. But come on, you know for a fact it doesn’t stop there. Why not go onto another app where you can zap off those zits and brighten those pearly whites, because you can bet your bottom dollar there is an app for that. Don’t forget that you can Instasize your pic, which makes the borders a pretty color that matches your eyes, not to mention it makes it a nice square so you don’t have to crop out those new Steve Madden’s you’ve been dying to show off. Now that you have perfected your picture itself you’re done, or so you thought. JK, you still need a fire caption with some bomb diggity hashtags and a location that will make your grandma’s, BFF’s cat’s, cousin jealous.

Now let’s talk about captions. You have a few options in this category: you can be bold and not post a caption, post an emotional quote that will make Adele sound like child’s author, or you could be funny. Not posting a caption at all is quite the risk, but could yield a very big reward. The no caption thing is mostly successful if you have a lot of middle school followers, or if you are a celebrity with a great makeup artist and only socks on. From the emotional standpoint you could post a banging quote, but only if you want to give of the “I’m a strong single black woman and I don’t need no man” approach. If you want a lot of likes with this quote caption, you have to post something that a lot of people can relate to. I know I post a lot of Lana Del Rey so that people think I’m troubled and need either a pile of kittens and puppies who poop money, or a dump truck filled with Armani models holding chocolate. Either way, people feel pity and throw a sad college girl a like.

Lastly in the caption category, we have the funny people. Now you also have a few subcategories if you want to take this route, but beware the likes are either going to flow like lava or be held up like grandpa after he eats meatloaf. Now to perfect this one you either need a bunch of people who get the joke, like something from a movie, or you need something like an inside joke that people will ponder and want to know more about. For instance, if you go to a huge raging party and your best friend’s boyfriend throws up in the bathroom, your caption could be, “so-and-so can’t hang.” By saying such a vague phrase, the people you are with will think it's hilarious, but the people who don’t know can infer what really happened. Now that you have the caption of a lifetime and the picture perfect post, you’re done right? Wrong! You still need hashtags and emojis before you can even think about posting this MOFO.

Hashtags for days. If you want people who don’t follow you to see your super amazing posts and possibly get a random like or two on a pic, post a vague hashtag like, #dogs, #tbt or #beauty. People eat that stupid stuff up and they all want to know about how your dog likes to eat Purina on Wednesdays. But again, like the captions, you can go a funny route. Say Mark liked Sally and wanted to ask her to homecoming with a poster, so he did and she said yes so they and to take a pic and post it on Insta. Mark could post the picture with the hashtag, #shesaidno, to be funny and get more likes, which we all know is the end result. But don’t stop there, you need a few cute emojis to top off this perfect caption, hashtag combo. If you did something bad, such as drinking the devil’s juice and dancing to Fetty Wap until the day is new, then your emojis should represent that night. Post something like the devil smiley and the “one-hunned” emoji so that people know you are one bad to the bone mamacita. But if your family follows you on Insta like mine do you can always go for the safe double pink heart emoji combo so everyone thinks you are a personable girl with her life all figured out and a wedding board on Pinterest. OMG we are almost at the end of this posting extravaganza. The final step you take to posting this new addition to the Insta collage is location and tagging.

If you posted a selfie you can skip over the tagging part, but if you have multiple people in this part stay tuned. Make sure you tag as many people in the picture you can because, if they are tagged in the picture they will like it, ending in a better like turnout for you. Also make sure that no one else posted the exact same picture as you right before this because who wants to see seven of the same pictures while scrolling through their Instagram feed. I know I don’t want to see Maggie and Sarah and Jenny all post the same picture of them at Chipotle, which I wasn’t invited to, but that’s a whole other story. Moving on. Now all you who are posting a selfie, the location is still extremely important. This needs to make everyone else who is sitting at home in their beds eating Ben and Jerry’s while watching reruns of Grey’s super jealous. Now make sure that if this is a food pic the lighting is right and if you are on a date with a boy (which trust me if that ever happens us girls take a pic), that the food hasn’t been eaten yet and the boy isn’t paying attention. But that is a whole other topic is for another time. Anyway, back to the location. Make everyone jealous. The jealousy factor is the whole reason we post. We want everyone to know we are super cool and aren’t just sitting alone singing to Justin Bieber’s song "Sorry" in the shower. Remember: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. Now after all that time spent editing and captioning and location-ing and emoji-ing, you are finally ready to post that pic. But only if the time is right.

Now don’t think that you can just go posting these pics all willy nilly, whenever you want. There are strategic times in which you post on days like Monday through Thursday, Friday/ Saturday and then Sunday. You can not post a picture early in the morning, it’s like Instagram suicide. Also don’t plan on making that drunken 1:30 a.m. post because ain’t nobody got time for that. Monday through Thursday, the best times to post are usually around 7:30 p.m. This gives everyone time to get home from work, school, or sports and relax with a nice Insta scroll or two. Now Friday and Saturday are a little harder. If you post Friday or Saturday, 9:30 p.m. is the best time to post. People in college are at pre-games, high school kids are getting ready to party or are at sporting events and everyone is willing to give like Oprah at Christmas. Sunday you have to play your cards correctly so that you can get optimum likes. Sunday you can either post at 1 p.m. or 4 p.m. This being said be warned, depending on sporting events or hung over drinkers, the likes could vary. Posting comes with so many risks people. Be careful.

Now that all the fun and games is over it’s time to talk about the reality of Instagram. People between the ages of 16 and 25 are at some of the most vulnerable times in their lives. We are all impressionable and willing to do just about anything to be liked, both in the cyber world and out. The ratio of people who follow you to the amount of people you follow really gets to some people. In the human brain, it is better to have tons of followers you don’t know and follow less people you do know so that way when it comes to likes, you seem like the most popular girl in West Chester with hundreds of likes and no one to go to dinner with. It is a real problem in today's society where likes are equivalent to friendships, and a double tap is all it takes to have a major confidence boost. But it can also tear people down. Why did Kara get 297 likes, when I only got 113? The truth is, it's not because she’s prettier than you or she has more real life true friends. It’s because she followed the simple stupid steps to becoming Insta famous and even instantly vapid. And what is sad is that becoming Insta Famous is actually a thing.

Some people get paid to promote brands on social media. If you have a ton of followers brands will pay you to wear their clothes, or post their nutrition bar, or even something stupid like facial cleanser, just to get that extra promotion out to the kids who are brainwashed into thinking it’s cool. Social media today changes what we want into things we think we need, as well as the things we think are cool are no longer the things that make us happy. The problem with this false friendship is that when you get a like on a photo it boosts self esteem. People in this electronic era do not see the problem in this fake popularity based application. It is sad that in times like these that if I see Kim K wearing a bracelet, worth thousands of dollars, I believe it's normal to want those things. Instead of being so selfish we could spend more it me being productive maybe? A like shouldn’t be the main accomplishment of our day. Maybe take the time that liking someone else’s picture in the morning to do something productive like your own homework? I do not know because my BFF Jill’s post is way more important. In society today all that matters are who is better than who and not how they got there. Apparently in the mind of most Instagram users, at least ones close to high school and college ages, the more likes you get online, the more people like you in the real world. In the end we all die and we'll all have the same amount of worthiness, so why waste your time editing a selfie and waiting for the perfect time at night to post your great caption, just to realize you have wasted your entire young life hoping people will tap a picture to make you feel better. Newsflash, it doesn’t help. The likes that you get on your Instagram are usually directly correlated to how much time you put into your posts, and how long you spend on the app itself. If you have a lot of followers, you have a lot of likes. The opposite is true also, but the people who post things to make themselves happy, are the people who in the end are using the app correctly.

In the end of life, while one is laying on their deathbed, does the like you did or did not receive really matter all that much? Did editing and reposting all of your most popular moments of life make your life worth while? I hope getting over 100 likes isn’t what you wrote on your job application, and you have better things to do than post six selfies a week from your bathroom mirror. But again, your life is your own, so post carefully and do not forget about the world around you.