I’ve been trying to meet new friends and new people to hang out with so have been going to a lot of social events.
I noticed that everyone seems to ask for my instagram account and when I say I don’t have one that connection kind of dies, and it feels too personal to ask for someone number when I just met them.
I don’t want to create an instagram because of the privacy invasions of meta but I also don’t want to feel left out when trying to make new connections. Anyone have any advice?
I assume you’re Gen-Z too! Socializing and Dating without Instagram and Snapchat is impossible! Don’t listen to others here shouting “get their email!” “ask them to install Signal!” "ask them to install PixelFed!! “They are not worth your friendship if they don’t want to talk to you if you don’t have Instagram!”. I know the real world ground reality having experienced it earlier, you have no other choice than making an IG and Snap account. Everyone you talk in real life will ask for your “ID” after sometime, which means IG or Snap ID depending on where you live. No “normal person” (as in normie) will install Signal or PixelFed for you. I have studied in 2 separate universities and only knew 3 girls who didn’t have Insta or Snap. The foids who spout nonsense here are millennials who have no idea on how Gen-Z interact with each other or individuals who are too far into the privacy-anonymity spectrum. Anyway, you can take the following steps which will preserve your privacy in IG and Snap:
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Create IG and Snap accounts using newly created emails.
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Use AI generated or heavily AI altered pic as your profile pic in IG. So Meta wouldn’t be able to meaningfully use your photo to train their facial recognition systems.
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If you decide to post photos on Insta, alter them heavily using AI or Photoshop.
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Use ASCII empty characters for your “name” in Insta and Snap. Use random username generators for usernames.
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Keep Bio empty, if it doesn’t allow you to keep it empty, use ASCII empty characters.
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Don’t watch or post Insta reels.
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Don’t like, comment or share in Insta.
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Don’t watch stories in Snap.
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Use open source frontend apps on Android to browse Insta and Snap (I previously used a good app for Insta (I forgot it’s name) which allowed you to control which pages to show. Like you can choose to stop displaying reels and feeds section and make it only to display DM’s. This is very useful if your only aim on Insta is to use it for messaging. It even had a “Ghost mode” which will allow you privately browse Insta without alerting anyone- it’ll keep your online status as “offline” even when you’re online and turns off typing indicators for DM’s and groupchats and you can videocall anyone without showing them you’re online. Like I said, I forgot it’s name, I’ll link it here if I find it).
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“Build a profile”- follow all of your Job/University/School friends. This will make your profile look less suspicious. Remember - It IS suspicious to not have Insta and Snap in this day and age. The fact that you didn’t have both of these apps this far itself will make you look suspicious in the first place. So first build a profile.
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Some have recommended apps like Insular, Shelter and Island to Isolate apps but let me tell you the truth- they will have no effect. Meta and Snapchat will still track and surveil you.
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De-activate account after your purpose is resolved (only on IG) - Deactivate after your work is done. Say like the girl you were talking to has officially become your girlfriend. Don’t do this on Snapchat as Snap doesn’t have separate deactivate and delete account options. Your Snap account will get “permanently deleted” if you don’t re-activate within 6 months.
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Using VPN, TOR and other similar proxies will get your account getting flagged by Meta’s spam filters and you will have to verify your identity via a real-time video verification (which has got scarily accurate in recent years) or submitting a government provided ID. Which is against what you’re trying to achieve. So don’t do that.
Good luck!
Just an anecdote, but every time I try to create an account on Instagram I get automatically banned after account creation before even login-in for the first time.
If I recal they then ask me for a copy of my ID to confirm my name is real (which it isn’t).
I have no idea how they know, I’ve tried literally with different residential IPs, different emails and even on brand new devices. On my Instagram user friend’s house.
Maybe it’s just
badgood luck, who knows. In don’t need Instagram anyway, just an interesting fact.This comment is all you need to know about this community! c/privacy is filled with millennials, Gen-X and boomers! There are only a handful of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha here. I was in the same situation as you 2 years ago and asked advice here and the most upvoted comment was “If you can’t ask for a girl’s number you ain’t got game”. I deleted my original lemmy account within a few minutes then. The Fediverse was filled with Linux nerds who were at the extreme ends of privacy-anonymity spectrum back then. And nothing seems to have changed much after reading all these comments. My original Fediverse account lasted approx. 1 month 2 weeks. Let’s see how much time this run lasts. I already have a lot of complaints regarding the Fediverse. The cons outweigh the pros. I’m not having fun here. It’s only a matter of time till I pull the trigger.
Am Gen Z, and currently in college. Clearly am on Fediverse, and I was never a fan of using IG (only got it cause my middle school friends made me since COVID was happening) and I have completely deactivated my account as of last winter. I have met several people at my college who don’t use Instagram for various reasons, and while my other friend is a little disappointed that she can’t message them on insta, at the end of the day, we live and move on.
At my college a lot of clubs use GroupMe (owned by Microsoft unfortunately) and we have an official Discord Hub that a lot of clubs are on also. So there’s two different methods of communication that aren’t Insta that are common on my campus. Some of my friends do have Signal in fact (even my Instagram loving friend), but because more of them don’t we unfortunately don’t use Signal, even when I beg my one friend who has it. She says 'it sucks and who uses it", but I’ve never really had the chance to use it to judge her statement as true or not.
Anyway, yeah, you could do a bunch of crazy shit and make fake accounts on Insta to have superficial conversations with people who won’t give you the time of day for having an app, or you could just not. It’s not that hard to find better friends/people to hang out with, and if you really make a connection with them then they should be happy with any form of communication you offer. Not all Gen Z are adamant Instagram defenders, some even hate it for various reasons (Suckerberg, being data stalkers, promoting bigotry, promoting mental health disorders, etc.)
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Phone number can be problematic to share in some areas of the world, so it does depend on where you are, but email shouldn’t be an issue in general. So easy to get an additional, private email address and use both at the same time.
I also don’t have most mainstream social media anymore but have noticed a significant drop in people asking for it these days. Might just be my location in a city with a lot of progressive, tech savvy people, though.
I mostly use phone number and/or Signal these days.
If they shun you for not having instragram, find better social circles.
it feels too personal to ask for someone number when I just met them
Signal usernames invalidate the phone number argument.
Make a pixelfed, people want to know you we ask for IG
What I’ve done since Instagram is practically necessary for networking at my university, is using shelter for android I have Instagram Revanced in a work profile, and I’ve opted out from everything possible in the app, which is easy but not simple. I also have my account set to private and no posts, although maybe I’ll need some at some point idk. I also have trackercontrol to block trackers, and I use the Facebook Container add-on for Firefox as well as Ublock Origin.
How is having somebody’s phone number more personal than having access to an account where you can see all the photos they take and shit? I’d just ask for their number.
It’s just a perception thing we have, a phone number DOES feel more personal to me, even if most people’s Instagram accounts are even more detailed. In my case, I literally never posted anything on Instagram, so there was nothing to gather about me besides what posts I liked.
Plus some people my interpret asking for a phone number as wanting to date them or smth (although the same could be said for any messaging service tbh).
Anyone have any advice?
- Ask them for their number, and see how it goes? Worst case, they will say ‘no’, end of the story. Maybe the will ask why you don’t have IG and that will be the start of an interesting conversation.
- Try to meet different kind of people? I mean it seriously. I know a lot of people around me who have IG/Facebook/X and so on but at the same time none of them make it a requirement to use it.
- Use a second phone/number for that crap content only? I barely use my ‘real’ phone (I have nothing installed on it beside what I’m required to use) still I do own a second phone just so I can easily share a number with all the services and various craps that ask for one. It’s a phone I never answer to, despite it being constantly harassed by callers. And that peace of mind (my real number is almost spam free) only costs me the 2€/month (plus the phone, I purchased used). You should be able to do something similar for social networks: have a second phone without anything personal on it, just with IG.
- Accept that you’re doomed to use IG because it’s with those ‘IG people’ and no others you want to spend your time with? I like to spend time with people reading books, it’s kinda expected we indeed read books. Would I not like to read, I would not spend as much time with them.
2€/month
🇫🇷❓
I suppose you’re asking if I’m French? Yes. And, yes, it’s a French operator (Bouygues Mobile)
Yea we’re pretty much the only country that has cheap mobile plans like that
Find a way to use Instagram to drive them to another app, like this: https://lemmy.world/post/21620691
same, i just say I don’t do instagram and tell them my local whatsapp equivalent’s id or phone number. I’ve tried using instagram a few times but it can’t be used anonymously at all.
Gonna be real with you, if you’re in the US and wanna connect with pretty ladies you pretty much have to have insta or messenger. If they are devout apple heads they might wanna do iMessage but as I don’t use apple products I can’t speak to that. I personally don’t want anyone to have my phone number. I have signal, messenger, whatsapp, Kik, WeChat, and discord because I travel a lot and I have contacts on all of them. People prefer social media so they can remember you, your interests, things you say publicly, and use that to help decide if they wanna hang.
Don’t worry, I handed out my Instagram to some people who requested it and those connections fizzled out just as easily.
Could be down to me only ever checking it on a designated laptop once a week, but in my opinion, if it comes down to an Instagram account and regular app access, can’t even exchange SMS numbers to text, then it’s already a tenuous connection.
Is this an age thing? I’m about 40 and I never had instagram, barely used facebook, and didn’t use any others really. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem where someone backed out because I didn’t have instagram. But I also don’t have a big group of casual friends, and maybe that would be harder.
Discord sucks, but I’ve noticed a lot of social groups use it. A couple meetups I go to all use it for communication. Maybe that’s more bearable than instagram?
I’m in my mid-thirties, and while I didn’t have the Instagram/Whatsapp problem as a late teen / young adult, the pressure to use Facebook was similar. When I decided to close my account, it was almost a social death. My friends organised all their outings there and didn’t want to bother reaching out to me. And many of those who did go out of their way to include me occasionally made passive-agressive remarks about how I was being ridiculous and making their life difficult.
That said, I would have loved being able to just say “I don’t have Insta” when men were bothering me in the street. :-) But I’m sure that wouldn’t stop most of them even now.
Is this an age thing?
Yup.
An newer humans go for tiktok.
What about email? Just create a new one just for this stuff. Go back to giving out just an email. Everyone has one of those too and it’s not as ‘archaic’ as a phone#
Filthy fucking boomer! Get off the internet!
How old are you? Nobody uses email for regular chat
I’m kind of an old and email was never used for regular chat at like any time lol
Anyone have any advice?
Yes: recognize what you’re trying to accomplish and change your actions.
Privacy requires shutting people out of your life. Meeting new people requires letting people into your life.
If people expect that the first “gate” into your life is your social media then meet that expectation. Have a social media presence. Post shit that you want people to see on it.
If you’re afraid of letting the companies that operate social media see your life, examine why. It may be that you’re perfectly fine with the trade off of a limited hang out in exchange for looking normal. Most people are.
It doesn’t have to be instagram. You could have a snapchat or a tiktok or whatever.
I disagree. You are normal if you have social media and not if you don’t?
Dunno man, if people need IG to interact with you and you are not comfortable with it, maybe they are not your people, you know?
Why should one go into uncomfortable territory for others, people should interact from positions of comfort, otherwise its a stretch for one side and just a bad time all round.
One thing is for sure @[email protected] , you will have a harder time, make less connections, but I’m pretty sure the ones you will make, will be solid.
One word of advice as a fellow non-socialmedia-person. If you want to meet new people, make sure you are in the same place at a certain time on certain days. That way people know where you might be during certain hours and that is also a way to make connections. Just be sure you like said place.
Social media is literally normal.
It has gone through a process called normalization in order to become an expected part of social interaction. The op even said that people expect them to have a particular type of account and they feel like not having one excludes them from having more friends.
Yes, you are normal if you have a social media account and abnormal if you don’t.
Social media is literally normal.
That’s your bubble, not mine and not generally. Social media profiles is something 2010’s here, maybe some still have it. What’s in now is loose communities like Lemmy or Tiktok and chat apps for irl friends.
It’s also the ops bubble. My replies are generally directed at the op and their post.
I will also point to the requirement though, that us visa applicants give up social media account names or be subject to denial as evidence that it’s considered normal.
If it wasn’t considered normal to have social media then the cbp wouldn’t be so quick to implement that process.
I agree with you. Social media has been normalized and you are not fit in society if you don’t have any at all.
The ol’ sarcasm detectors’ flashing red, ringing the bell and pouring black smoke out of all the panel joints but yes: if you want to fit into society it’s important to have social media.
If you wanted to live a private life in the 1970s, would it be better to descend from your cabin hundreds of miles from civilization with a wild mane of shaggy hair wearing your homemade leather suit or with an unstylish but kempt haircut, nondescript jeans and shirt and military duffel bag looking like any other of the myriad characters wandering the roads at the time?
Obviously you’d want the latter. Part of privacy is blending in so that you don’t arouse interest.
Nowadays if you want to be a private person and still interact in society, like the op, you need to have all the trappings of a someone who doesn’t raise alarm bells. That includes, especially as your age drops, social media.
