A Philosophical Defense of “Propping for Instagram”

Social media is like a crowded bar. It may be unpleasant, but everybody goes, because everybody is there. As a result, much like an overstuffed room full of belligerent drunks, Twitter and Facebook have devolved into ideological echo chambers full of vitriol, decorate with all the bad “showing off” and bragging behavior we were rightly discouraged from displaying as children.

I have to say though, Instagram seems different. Yes, you can easily find toxic garbage on it, but you can even more easily find beauty and sincerity. And, unlike Twitter and Facebook, its API prevents third-party apps from posting to it, which keeps spam and duplication to a bare minimum.

Complaints about Instagram tend to focus on one of two areas: its somewhat arbitrarily enforced censorship (legitimate artists often have their accounts shut down for nudity, while aspiring models use tiny blurred dots to squeak their images under the bar), and the artificiality of “propping for Instagram” — artfully styling and posing the elements of a photograph to create a “share-worthy” image that is ostensibly candid, but actually contrived.

Censorship is as censorship does, but the idea of “propping” intrigues me. As a professional photographer, I have had a few opportunities to work with food and prop stylists, and they are fantastic. It makes it so much easier to take a good photo when the subject matter is arranged in an attractive way. So, in that respect, I admire the Insta-propping itself as an…