While Facebook was also a place for posting photos, and at some level presenting oneself as one would like to be seen, Instagram allowed for a seamless and more continuous visual narrative. In this way, active Instagrammers “created an Instagram life,” telling their own stories, or at least a stylized and idealized version of it, in images. If the average Facebook post showed a group of friends or a family in good times (perhaps posing with the dog, or holding up drinks at a party), Instagram’s photos would generally be more dramatic, glamorous, and often edgier, for the simple reason that they were posted with the calculated intent to seize attention and to elicit a reaction.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1045