A week ago, I requested the deletion of my Instagram account. Instagram knows what it does by making you wait 30 days to fulfill it instead of letting you delete it immediately, because today I was weak enough to come back. I downloaded the app, tried to log in, and got this.

When I tapped “appeal,” I got to read:

Some of the things that we don’t allow include artificially collecting likes, followers, or shares, posting repetitive content, or repeatedly contacting people for commercial purposes without their consent.

I collected all my 90 beautiful followers by posting cats I found in the street and pop music anthems, there’s nothing artificial about that. I don’t usually “post repetitive content,” but maybe I shared Atlantis by SHINee one too many times. And there was that one time I uploaded the entire music video of Von dutch by Charli xcx on release day, divided into 1 minute stories, but I already paid for that when Instagram deleted it. They couldn’t boycott her, and it ended up being brat summer anyway.

A few days before the deletion request, I do remember uploading a story where I wrote something along the lines of:

The day will come when [CEO of social media service] gets a neck tattoo of a [symbol of good luck and prosperity in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain countries], and we will have to migrate to a different social network.

I shared the URL of this blog then and announced it would be a place where they could find me, and here we are now. I’ll gaslight myself into believing that Instagram couldn’t handle my rebelliousness, and that’s the reason I’m not allowed back. I’m not going to appeal, I’m too proud. I’m waving goodbye to that account, and I don’t think I’ll be making a new one anytime soon. I usually wait around half a year between deleting one account and creating a new one (I’m too proud, but not that proud). Given the state of social media in 2025 and that I’m enjoying this blog so much better than commercial social media, we’ll see what happens.