Artistic Adaptation: How Instagram's Artists, Memers and Creators Have Learned To Adapt And Thrive On The Platform Through The Years

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the October 2020 issue of Meme Insider, a magazine covering memes and other internet phenomena. You can subscribe here.

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Instagram is one of the most popular ways to host pictures online. Users upload more than 95 million images to the platform every day and the app clocks in more than 1 billion monthly users. The company was acquired by Facebook in 2012 but remained largely steadfast in its individuality. Despite launching add-ons to compete against other video-forward upstarts, like Stories to contend with Snapchat, IGTV for YouTube and the new TikTok-esque Reels, Instagram's core is still in images. The ease of use and layout consistency made Instagram a favorite among artists and memers alike.

It makes sense why visual artists prefer Instagram to other social media platforms. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, you don't have to be a wordsmith because, on Instagram, images are king. "Instagram is completely image-based," said JL Westover, the creator of the “Mr. Lovenstein” comics series. "My comics are images. It's a match made in heaven." The layout of a user page turns every profile into a gallery wall. Each page consists of rows of three images stacked neatly atop each other, and timelines feature one respective image at a time. While users scroll through images on their feeds, the artist's work is all they see for a brief moment. Compared to the never-ending cycling of videos on TikTok and the short shelf life of Twitter trends, users can curate their pages to reflect their personalities or their artistic values. It allows artists and regular users to express themselves through their posts in a more organic way.

Instagram's rise to the top of the social media pyramid began in the early 2010s, correlating with a change in demographics on Facebook. "I ended up at Instagram with everyone else," said Ed Fornieles, a London-based digital artist. "The rise of the platform seemed to mark this generational fracturing off. Before that, Facebook, I think, could be said to be the primary public space, a place where people of various ages and demographics would congregate." On Facebook, Fornieles produced works that played with the site's networks by creating fake accounts and having them interact with each other. "Facebook was originally much more geared toward creating a cohesive, personal narrative told through video, images and text." Instagram offered something different, which he describes as more textual. "It's a mood board, not a story," he said, where the "personal still exists." It's hard to be personal on Facebook due to its sheer size and function. By 2020, Facebook grew to more than 2.7 billion active monthly users, but some artists had a difficult time growing with it.

Shifting focus to Instagram is a common trend among artists who find their home on the platform. Some memers say that Facebook's algorithm stymied growth and inspired a mass exodus. For them, the move was a practical one. "I think one of the biggest incentives for the migration from Facebook to Instagram was, at some point, Facebook implemented an algorithm that affected meme pages' post reach," @coryintheabyss said. This algorithm, he alleged, "undercut the audience."

Changes to an algorithm are nothing new for Facebook or any other social network. In 2013, Facebook announced a preference for "high-quality content," which favored trusted sources, as well as "timely and relevant content." The company included memes in the blog post announcing the crackdown on "low-quality posts." Algorithms are far from perfect, and the company continued to institute changes to theirs over the next decade to help remedy the issue. Some of these changes, like rules about image fidelity, have had a noticeable effect from those who operate meme pages. In 2017, @coryintheabyss saw his numbers begin to drop. After speaking to other creators, he concluded that an algorithm change was to blame. "At some point, my memes would be seen by maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people, like a really viral meme, from my page alone. Then it got into the low thousands, like 2,000, 7,000, 8,000 people. So my reach was cut by this algorithm, and it happened across the board to meme makers."

Instagram also has its own set of struggles expressed by creatives, such as unclear post scheduling policies. Amy of @tinytoystudio uses Instagram to sell toys, jewelry and other custom and homemade crafts but has expressed challenges with the platform. Amy wrote to us that Instagram's algorithm could be "very frustrating" at times, specifically following a shift from its originally chronological format. "Years ago, it was chronological, and I knew exactly when to post to reach the biggest percentage of my existing followers and also the attention of potential new followers." Though the intent was to stop people from gaming the system, creators who wish to form a strategy, especially if they hope to grow their business, face growing pains during these changes.

Whether for artistic or practical reasons, the jump has been a fruitful one for many creators despite some difficulties. The app is "uniquely suited for memes," @coryintheabyss said. It's a much more content-forward network, and that focus can inspire artists. Adam Padilla, the founder of the digital marketing company BrandFire and a Photoshop memer known for mock advertisements and image parodies on his well-known account @adam.the.creator, saw Instagram as a motivator to build himself as an artist and a business person. In 2014, Padilla, a marketing professional who was letting his fine arts degree collect dust, picked up a sketchbook at his wife's suggestion and began posting still-life drawings. Over time, he saw his audience grow. "It's like when somebody says they're doing the 30-day challenge to work out," Padilla said about his early work. "I was like, 'I'm thinking 100 days.' Then I said, 'You know what? I'm gonna do a whole year and draw every single day this year.'" He later began posting original memes, image edits and parodies that helped his page grow exponentially. Padilla saw Instagram as a challenge and used it to drive his ambition. Within six years, he accumulated more than 700,000 followers.

Picking Instagram "at random," Padilla told us the app put his work first. As memeing became a part of his daily life, he found himself joining a meme community within the Instagram world, joining DM groups filled with other prominent memers, like @Tank.Sinatra, @Shitheadsteve and @sonny5ideup, eventually becoming IRL friends and co-workers. "As I started posting memes, more of them started to come over to BrandFire, to the office, just to hang, because we're kind of like kindred spirits," he said. "So it really became sort of like a clubhouse."

Unlike other social networks, in-depth discussion is arguably second on Instagram. While people share each other's work by tagging in the comments or reposting to Stories, Instagram doesn't have as many sharing options as some other platforms. "There's no 'share' or 'retweet' button," Westover wrote. "There are tags, but otherwise it's a complete mystery to me. I drop my comic in the feed and let Instagram do whatever black magic it's doing to spread it around. No links in posts is also a pain in the ass. That little bio link does a lot of heavy lifting." This lack of linking makes it harder to leave Instagram. If an artist wants to redirect someone to a personal website, store or charity, the user will have to go through a number of steps. In that time, the user can lose interest or log off entirely.

Instagram focuses the viewers' attention on the art itself, but creators still find ways to forge communities. "I've definitely made friends thru Instagram!" Amy of @tinytoystudio said. "There are so many lovely makers and collectors on Instagram, and I feel really fortunate to have connected with some of them!" While people sound off in the comments, the conversation is more minimal than on other platforms. "People are definitely chatty in the comment sections of Instagram," @coryintheabyss said. "It's a more visual-oriented media or social media site than Facebook, whereas Facebook is more about discourse."

Instagram's unique environment may come with its own limitations, but this also allows creators the space to deconstruct convention and form. @th0t_catalog, a memer known for posting figures that look like paper doll versions of Bratz, uses the characters to protest political and social concerns within meme culture. "A lot of meme formats have real people's faces on them, and all these people have gone viral or became associated with things that they didn't consent to," @th0t_catalog said. "I was more interested in using images that didn't depict actual people because I was afraid of doing harm to them, especially because a lot of times, it's black and brown people that are the ones that are made a joke of, made a mockery of or used for people to do the digital blackface shit … I don't wanna perpetuate that. I don't want to contribute to that." But by moving away from the standard meme formats and creating her own, @th0t_catalog was able to avoid a practice she finds offensive and make 100 percent original memes.

Other challenges arise from a hardware perspective, too. Instagram is primarily a mobile platform, so artists have to account for how the art looks on a smaller screen -- though this aspect has improved over the years. "The jump from PC to mobile has no doubt influenced my art," Westover said. "It's forced me to trim the fat and boil down each comic to its bare essentials. I try to accomplish every comic with as few words and images as possible. That guarantees every word and image will be nice and thicc." He also had to ditch the horizontal comic strip format that has defined the genre since the 19th century. "The slideshow function alone has changed the way people design comic strips. Instead of one big comic that might be hard to read, you can conveniently swipe panel by panel." The slide allowed comic artists, like Westover, to break from convention and find new ways to tell their stories.

"It's one of the best features of Instagram. Reading a comic one panel at a time is such a different experience,” Westover said. “I think it allows for more creative freedom. It also means you can have WAY more panels. For a comedy writer like me, it gives me the power to hide the punchline and throw in more misdirects. It's also one of the few ways we can break out of the 2×2 four-panel prison we've trapped ourselves in."

Instagram's tendency to focus on content allows artists to get creative with how they produce their works. Fornieles, who manipulated, challenged and bent Facebook's networking abilities with digital pieces in the early 2010s, eventually brought his style to Instagram. This year, for example, he launched a project in which participants took a journey to Mars on Instagram.

"Over a month, participants role-played being on a vessel to Mars, getting to know each other, confronting various challenges, to the point where, although it was fictional, the tension and dynamics were real on one level,” he said. “Structurally, though, it's the perfect delivery device for memetic content, putting the viewer in an almost trance-like state, zoning them into the content.”

The narrow focus of Instagram also offers hope for marginalized people to democratize the art world. A mobile device is the price of entry on Instagram, and while they're somewhat expensive, a phone's cost pales in comparison to that of an art degree, th0t_catalog argued. "These platforms, like Twitter and Instagram, allow marginalized people's voices to be heard. You don't need a high school education, you don't need continuing ed, higher ed. You don't need a publisher. You don't need an editor. It's like direct to consumer."

Regardless of how artists use or feel about Instagram, the platform's popularity has driven them to get creative with any potential limitations. These constraints give artists new ways to create and share because working within this system offers new ways to challenge it. Whether that be formally or thematically, Instagram's artists find ways to adapt and express themselves, while existing in a public space that's privately owned.

All this comes at a price, according to @th0t_catalog, because as more money gets involved, the cost of free expression goes up, and little by little, it goes away. "When more capital gets involved, then tweaks are made, and it eventually benefits the same people who always benefit. That's my number one concern with the platform."