I was 14 when I downloaded Instagram in 2016. Most of my friends had been on social media for a long time, while for me, it was all very new and unexplored. Perhaps because I felt I was missing out on that experience and needed to catch up, I became very serious about running my Instagram account. I wanted my feed to look as coherently as possible. To avoid disappointing all my 60 followers, I regularly uploaded new pictures and always made sure to add as many hashtags as I could come up with to reach a broader audience. My dedication to posting seemed to be paying off as I started hearing more and more positive reactions from my friends, who kept telling me how much they liked my photos (while they were honestly sooo bad, with five different filters added on top of each other, usually depicting sunsets, flowers or a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows). Although I cared about curating my posts from the very beginning, it became a real obsession a year into my Instagram career when I discovered something called the “art hoe aesthetic”.
Follow for follow?
Art hoe aesthetic was characterized by a love for the color yellow, vintage clothes, succulents, and wearing vintage sweaters, mom jeans, and Doc Martens oxford shoes paired with socks depicting a famous painting, usually Starry Night, by Vincent van Gogh. Art Hoes loved sunflowers, hanging out in nature, painting, and playing covers of Mac DeMarco or Rex Orange County on their ukuleles. I quickly fell in love with all those things and started incorporating that style into my life. Although I had always enjoyed making art and liked Van Gogh’s paintings long before I came across the trend, the internet aesthetic higly inspired how I began dressing and what music I started listening to. It also majorly influenced what I posted on Instagram. I wanted to fit into that box of being a cool, artsy girl so badly that caring about the aesthetics went a bit out of control. Not only would I spend hours contemplating what to upload next, planning my future posts in special apps that enabled me to see how new pictures would look together with the ones that were already on my feed, but I also constantly analyzed whether a current moment was aesthetic and insta-worthy enough to capture. If I was going on a holiday with my family, wherever we went, I was mostly preoccupied with thinking about what kind of opportunities for Instagram photos that place offered. The same would happen when I hung out with my friends, although they were similarly obsessed with taking pictures as me. Therefore, all our meetups would include at least a few staged photo shoots of us doing cool-looking things like sitting on a picnic blanket eating strawberries, taking Polaroid pictures, or looking through vinyl records in a music store.
I also cared a lot about the number of followers, which was probably the worst part of my Instagram mania. I tracked the number of likes under my photos and regularly engaged in actions such as shoutout for a shoutout (promoting someone else’s account on my Instagram story and them doing the same for me as an exchange) or follow for follow. When I look back at it, I find it completely nonsensical, but at the time, I thought that the more people who follow me, the better I am at curating my feed. It was almost like a game where new likes and follows felt like points I was gaining, and they were getting me closer to being just like the expert players (the people I saw as my biggest inspiration). At some point, I figured out what exactly my target audience wanted to see and started caring less about what I would truly like to share in favor of gaining approval from all my fellow art hoes. It wasn’t a true image of myself that I wanted to exhibit anymore; it was just an aesthetic.
The fine line between a cute style and unnecessary comparison
Considering that I was fifteen at the time and it was a period of my life when I was still trying to find out who I was, what I enjoyed, and how I wanted to express myself, it is understandable I fell into those mindless attempts to appear a certain way so easily. Perhaps, there are even some advantages to that. To some extent, it encouraged me to be creative, and I truly enjoyed taking pictures, although, on the other hand, if we looked at different accounts representing that aesthetic, it would strike us that most of them look more or less the same. In my case, besides the fact that I cared way too much about having plenty of likes and followers, there was nothing necessarily bad about it, as the aesthetic didn’t promote any harmful habits. However, I believe such a dedication to fit into a specific style can be dangerous or at least take away a part of childhood experience that should not be focused on trying to achieve unrealistic standards. Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of very young girls recording makeup or skincare tutorials on Instagram, sometimes while sharing stories about their crushes or friendship dramas. I’m pretty sure most of them are not fascinated with makeup as a form of self-expression but rather want to follow specific trends and make sure their looks fit online beauty standards, which is shocking as they definitely do not need any improvement of their eleven-year-old faces.
Right now, I don’t care if the posts on my Instagram correspond with one other, and I upload whatever I want in a much more casual way. In fact, I hardly ever post any pictures since Instagram stories became much more popular, and I like the idea of their temporality. Still, I often ask myself: why do I want to share specific moments of my life in that way? After all, I am still constructing my online identity, and by choosing what to post, I try to make it fit into some standards, even though I don’t let myself be influenced so much by what I see online. Nevertheless, what I think is the most important is that I now find originality and authenticity way more exciting than being defined by a single style. I use the app to share my life with people I know instead of seeking approval from random users who simply post aesthetically pleasing images.
This post is super interesting! I’m also someone who loves taking photos when I travel. I used to be really obsessed with getting the perfect angle and spent a lot of time editing before sharing on Instagram. But at some point, I realized that once the photo was posted, it didn’t really serve any other purpose. I wasn’t even revisiting them. It felt like I was missing the point—wanting to capture memories but getting caught up in sharing them. Now, like you, I only take photos when I truly want to and focus more on cherishing my memories rather than posting them.
I think it’s completely normal, even healthy, for a 15-year-old to explore who they are—what they like, what interests them, and what makes them feel good. It’s part of growing up. Many of us have experienced belonging to different subcultures as we search for identity. But what’s happening now with all these rapidly changing trends is concerning. It’s not just teens; even people in their twenties and thirties are jumping from one trend to another, constantly reshaping their identities to fit new boxes. One moment, they’re into “village core” aesthetics, then “old money,” and the next day, it’s “soft girl” or “dark academia.” This constant shifting can be overwhelming and, I believe, may lead to losing a sense of self or even contribute to mental health struggles.
What scares me is how this has evolved, especially for younger generations. The focus seems to be less about genuine self-expression and more about meeting online beauty and style standards. Many young girls are obsessed with fitting into these trends without realizing they might be missing out on the freedom that comes from simply being themselves.
love how you’ve now shifted to embracing originality and casual posting. It’s refreshing to see how your approach to social media has evolved into something more genuine, and I believe that’s a path more people should take—being true to yourself, rather than chasing trends for validation.
It’s really interesting how your experience with Instagram mirrors what a lot of us went through when social media became such a big part of our lives. I remember when I was younger, I also cared a lot about making sure my photos fit a certain aesthetic. For me, it was all about the “cool” vibe – looking like I had everything together, just like the popular influencers I admired. And like you, I also found myself caring more about how my feed looked than what I actually enjoyed sharing. It’s funny because even now, as I get older, I sometimes still catch myself worrying if the photos I take fit well together in my instagram feed.
I think what you’ve shared about the “art hoe” aesthetic is really relatable. It’s easy to get sucked into trends and compare yourself to others, especially when you’re trying to figure out who you are. But now, like you, I find authenticity to be so much more fulfilling. It’s great that you’ve come to appreciate the freedom to post casually, without worrying about approval. It’s definitely a reminder that social media can be fun when we use it to share genuine moments, not just try to live up to unrealistic standards.
Such a relatable post! When I was younger I also loved to take a lot of nature photos, however this was not considered an aesthetic on Instagram. I experienced a lot of anxiety around the number of likes my posts would get and the amount of followers I had. The planned fotoshoots are so relatable haha. I remember doing one with my bestfriend in a forest against trees. We truly looked so stupid but where convinced it was so cool and artsy.
The aesthetics are still very popular today. However I just stopped completely with posting on Instagram. It didn’t feel authentic anymore and I rather express myself through other ways. I need to admit that I do enjoy the cool aesthetics of others and really find inspirations in them.