Our experience with Instagram started as a smooth ride and ended up on a rocky road. So where to start on this one? Let’s say that we are surprised to see the selective indignation of Instagram over time. My reason to start sharing my latex content on Instagram is similar to that of Fetish Erotica. Guess most already know but for those who come across my existence for the first time, you can read about it here.
So I started sharing my content in the beginning of 2015 and it felt liberating. Because of my different approach to latex visuals, my following also grew quickly. Before I knew it my account accumulated 2000 followers. Running other accounts at that time I was surprised to see the growth going so quickly. This felt motivating to continue, use the platform and share more. Exactly what they want you to do so remember this.
Attracting the wrong kind of people
But the more followers you rack up also means that you attract the wrong kind of people. This basically means two clear main categories; people that have no clue about etiquette and those who think any online content is free and can be used to their liking. Over time I found more and more inappropriate messages in my inbox. From raunchy comments, dick pics and even publicly visible rude comments right under our content. Others just blatantly stole our images without credits. I’ll do a write-up about online etiquette in the near future.
We mainly ignored both types of people although we usually report copycats to get them removed. Messaging them is usually a waste of time as it ends up in useless discussions. Filling out the ‘copyright infringement’ form on Instagram takes about 30 minutes per image. So you end up investing a lot of time creating visuals and spend countless hours to get copied content taken down. To make things worse, back in the days you would notify Instagram and they would take action fairly quickly. Nowadays it’s different and far worse than it ever was.
The world upside down
Simply put, Instagram now literally offers a platform to host content and provides anonymous users to impersonate you. You can report and they will review it. If they see no issue you’ll have to fill out a form including your personal details and, wait for it, they will sent it to the one that impersonates you. This is the world upside down and it only promotes copyright infringement and impersonating. Because who in their sane mind will have their personal info sent to someone that pretends to be you? Right, Nobody!
Anyway, I’m drifting away from the title of this post even though the previous section also involves the selective indignation of Instagram. As aforementioned, they are merely interested in keeping as many users engaged for as long as possible. Simply because this is their business model. Hence nowadays your feed show a growing amount of irrelevant content (stuff you didn’t ask for) and more ads then ever before. Occasionally I still scroll through my feed and this easily makes up 50% of the visible content, if not more.
Vague Community Guidelines
Both of us started posting for the same reason and over time Instagram started to flag more content. We received regular messages that our content didn’t meet their ‘community guidelines’. We’ve read them over and over again (see above) and in our opinion our content doesn’t go against any point mentioned. To make things worse, Instagram strongly promotes ‘being yourself’. This is something we fully agree with and we’ve always voiced it with our content. But apparently being yourself doesn’t include our heavy rubber way of life. Judging by how many accounts in our community got taken down by Instagram over time.
Selective indignation of Instagram
Because of our content getting flagged constantly we either appealed or deleted it. Over time we decided to remove any artistic yet possibly suggestive content on both our profiles. It took the fun out of it for me as it felt like my create process got limited based on selective indignation. We never shared explicit content or nudity, yet it got flagged. Meanwhile there is an endless amount of content with suggestive, explicit or scantily clad women that apparently is fine. I’m all for clear rules but I resent double standards or selective indignation.
Where I started posting less, Fetish Erotica kept on going as she enjoyed it too much. Every time a post got flagged, when her account got blacklisted or even suspended, she simply appealed. Every time it would be corrected with apologies for any inconveniences. Until at one point her account got taken down out of the blue at roughly 57K followers. She was devastated and spent weeks trying to get in touch with Meta to get it resolved. Finally she got to speak to some people and they all told her the same, we’re looking into it. Basically showing no interest to actually get it fixed and keep you thinking they would resolve it. Something they didn’t and shortly after her account was binned forever. Even though she posted nothing that goes against the ‘community guidelines’ in our point of view.
Until recently, she tried to continue with new accounts and each one got deleted quicker and faster. Even though every appeal would be approved by Instagram which confirms that her content is always in line with the community guidelines. This brings me to the reels that Fetish Erotica loves making. On her last account she had one that went viral. At some point it was racking up roughly 4K views an hour. Until it got close to 350K views and surprise, surprise, her account was gone. Again. So she appealed to no avail and within only 5 minutes her 10th account was scrapped. Just like that. Combined there are nearly 100K followers lost. Thank you for creating inspiring content, thank you for keeping our audience engaged, we no longer want you, goodbye.
Love, acceptance and openmindedness
Now I am aware that we share content that is not for everyone. But you can only learn about the diversity of people by sharing any kind of specific interests. Not by looking at things while using double standards. We choose to share our love for latex in an artistic and non-explicit way. Most of our posts are accompanied by words of love, acceptance and open-mindedness. We believe that our approach to latex fetish is different from most and that it contributes to the acceptance of our way of life.
The good thing is that Instagram brought us together. Hopefully many others who are seeking what we have can be as lucky as we are. But this only works when you can truly be who you are and post about your lifestyle. That is without having to worry about the selective indignation of Instagram. My last post on Instagram was about my fetish queen. We regret to see these double standards. Therefore we recently decided to put our efforts and energy towards other platforms and it was the main reason for me to pick up this project.
Hugo
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