How ‘coronacation’ has caused the revival of finstas

Teagan Smith

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Teagan Smith

Finstas are taking over tradition Instagram during this period of isolation.

When superintendent Dr. Hank Thiele sent out the email informing us all that we will have the next three weeks off of school, the hallways erupted with applause and cheering.

Of course two of these weeks would have e-Learning days, and one week of it was our already planned spring break. But at the time, we were still mocking the severity of Coronavirus and thought this time off was going to be a blessing.

The term “coronacation” was used to describe how we all thought the next three weeks would go. Yet instead, we were all pushed into self-quarantine which then turned into a statewide lockdown. This has left students not only bored out of their mind, but craving communication and attention from their peers whom they were used to seeing everyday, in and outside of school.

This desperation caused the revival of the finstas.

Some will say that finstas — fake instagrams (also referred to as spam accounts) — were never dead in the first place. The purpose of these accounts are to have a more personal and realistic social media outlet — but predominantly used to complain about things I nor anyone else actually cares about.

A finsta is a place where you can post your thoughts and feelings to a smaller, limited amount of friends instead of on your main Instagram account.

Everyone has that friend who has posted on his or her finsta everyday since you started following it. But the majority of us rarely use our accounts in fear that we will look stupid if we post too much.

But Coronacation has changed this social standard drastically.

My daily instagram feed is now filled with everyone’s finstas posting throwbacks to when they were able to leave their house and see their friends. In between these posts are people complaining about how many things have been cancelled for them or how bored they are. Along with this there are polls and questionnaires on everyone’s stories.

Finstas are taking over Instagram.

People are even bringing back trends and games played on Instagram, making me question if the year is now 2015 again. Things like anonymous messages on Yolo and Ask.fm, or ‘how well do you really know me’ quizzes on Bestify have completely clouded my feed on every platform.

Two weeks ago everyone would have ridiculed any kid still posting things like this.

However, our generation’s need for constant social interaction has really pushed us into becoming the people we once made fun of. But at least it’s given me something to do while J. B. has forced me into practicing ”social distancing.”