Nairobi News

There is a certain level of shallowness that comes with using Instagram in this country.

‘KE Instagrammers’, as I will call the ‘bunch of losers’ on Instagram, are worse than those shagsmondoz who wear plastic Timberland shoes, fake leather jackets and cheap sunglasses upon arrival in the city.

Oh, and for those unsophisticated Kenyans who do not know what Instagram is all about, I will explain. Instagram is an annoying social media platform where wannabes, ne’er-do-wells, and riff-raffs post photos of their food, new shoes, cheap watches, cut-rate blue Subarus among other photoshopped pictures.

To make these otherwise ordinary photos look ‘cool’, they apply something called ‘filters’. Filters not only make a girl three shades lighter than her natural black obsidian skin tone but also causes her pimples and blackheads to disappear magically.

KE Instagrammers don’t realise that Instagram was created for people who have it.

Instagram is for the grandees and the big cheese in our societies. The bon vivants who holiday at the Maldives. The wealthy sybarites who shop at Harrods. The business oligarchs who dine in the Maharaja’s Pavillion at Raj Palace Hotel in Jaipur India. The Wall Street nabobs who spend Valentines at the Hilltop estate at Laucala Island resort in Fiji.

SHOW OFF

Instagram was not created for you to show off your Sh600,000 fly-by-night blue Subaru.

Instagram was made for the voluptuous and beddable Kim Kardashian, not for egoistic Range Rover owners who live in a piece of sky known as an apartment in Hazina, South B.

Instagram was created for celebrities and modern-day Madonnas; the Beyonces and Rihannas who want to give their legion of fans a sneak peak into their celebrity lives.

It was not created for D-list Kenyan musicians to show off their hired choppers and borrowed Mercedes Benzes.

It was not created for losers to brag about their three cents dinner at Caramel Lounge. Instagram was not created for desperados to show off poorly edited photos of their half-naked ghastly bodies.

Instagram is for the fashion supremos like Karl Lagerfeld, not for you to show off the cheap clothes you bought from Gikomba market.

Oh please, spare me the ‘roadtrip with boyfriend’ photos, I know lawyers in this town who airlift their girlfriends from Wilson Airport to Nanyuki for sundowners and Instagram knows nothing about it.

Keep the ‘holiday at the Mara’ pictures to yourself. Serious Kenyans fly their families to The Alps for Christmas and they are not even on Instagram.

NOUVEAU RICHE

The truth is, Kenyans who really should be on Instagram – the moneyed – have no time to take pictures and brag about their wealth on social media.

Instagram in Kenya has been left to nouveau riche who flock Blankets and Wine and show off their second-hand Range Rovers.

It has been left to cyberslackers who use their employers’ Internet to brag when their limited data bundles have run out.

KE Instagrammers have very low IQ levels to match their gigantic egos. The typical KE Instagrammer thrives on the approval of others.

And it is easy to understand why. KE Instagrammers have such a low self-esteem that they measure their worth against the number of people who ‘like’ their photos.

Studies have shown that a typical KE Instagrammer exhibits suicidal tendancies when they post a photo and two hours later, only two people have ‘liked’ that photo.

These Instagram braggarts are just ordinary folk, living ordinary lives with average paying jobs driving average cars and living in average neighbourhoods but want to create an impression of how they have ‘arrived’.

HASHTAGS

And what is a photo on Instagram without a jamboree of hashtags? A girl cooks a miserable dinner for her boyfriend, and then she takes a picture of the poor meal and posts it on Instagram with a battalion of hashtags such as #Dinnerwithboyfriend #Goodlife #Goodfood #myboyfriendisbetterthanyours #truelove #iaminlove #Qualitylife #loveintheair#ihopeheproposes.

What such a girl doesn’t realise is that no one cares and no amount of Instagram will keep your man away from straying.

He will still cheat on you and text me, and you will still be dumped for a ‘hot’ girl like me who doesn’t give a hoot about parading my life on Instagram.

I would never give a chance to a guy who is on Instagram. If you want to be my boyfriend, Instagram is not an option for you.

The young men on Instagram are tall babies, emotionally unstable attention-seeking teenagers. They are mostly broke, they wear cheap cologne, drive budget cars and portray a lifestyle that is not their own.

Woe unto you if you happen to date one of those Instagram boys. He will keep reaching for his phone to scroll through his Instagram timeline to ‘double-tap’ and comment on naked girls’ pictures.

Every hour, he keeps checking his phone to see how many ‘likes’ the photo of his new navy blue mtumba pair of loafers has gained. Men on Instagram are so shallow that they get turned on by silly things like expensive watches and cars.

Gentlemen of chivalry are not on Instagram; they are playing golf and discussing serious business, and you are seated there, in your two-bedroom apartment in South B, ‘instagramming’.

A real man is not judged by the number of followers on Instagram, but by the amount of wealth he acquires in his youth.

KE Instagrammers need to realise that they are just but small fish in a very shallow and stinky pond. You need to work harder and earn more money, and this is for free, you will never do it if all you do is post silly photos on Instagram.