‘Social Animals’ is the Latest Instagram Cautionary Tale

Rome is burning, yet everyone stays. The past few years have seen a level of backlash to the social media platform Facebook never before felt by the company since its inception in the early 2000s. Looking back at previous scandals feels almost laughable now: remember the outrage when the News Feed first arrived? When Facebook opened its doors to non-college students, including your grandma, or the campaign to omit “is” from following your name on a status update? And when Facebook kept changing its homepage layout to fit its newly intrusive ads? With various decisions that ruined the platform and turned Facebook into the place to find the latest anti-vaccination argument or Obama conspiracy theory, it’s hard to overstate how much Instagram, the company’s 2012 acquisition of $1 billion, is the future of the company. Sleek, mobile, and addictive, over the last decade Instagram has been the shiniest of the social media platforms, a place where users can show their best lives in simplicity and beauty minus the drag of reality. But is Instagram’s facade beginning to crack? That’s the subject of the latest in a plethora of movies and documentaries that are tackling the increasingly visible consequences of Instagram’s alternative world, a society complete with social rules, politics, and currency.

Like Netflix’s The American Meme, Social Animals’ message is based on its trust in its audience to understand the personal experience of a few as a microcosm of what they might see to be …