Ephemeral Social Media Visuals and Their Picturesque Design: Interaction and User Experience in Instagram Stories

This article examines the temporality of ephemeral visual posts to social media with an emphasis on Instagram stories. Drawing on theories of the spectacle, it is my contention that interaction and user-experience design, as it pertains to social media platforms, highlights the contemporary conditions and motivations in our society of abundant visual consumption. This article investigates what it means for a social media user to attend to such time-related visual experience. Throughout this piece, I critically survey the relationship between ephemeral Instagram stories’ popularity and the high speed temporality of the social media sphere with emphasis on the digital “picturesque.” Perishable daily sharing on social media reflects a contemplative glimpse into a personal lifespan presented as an object of mass appreciation. I examine how ephemerality as a component of design impacts online sociality through the picturesque visual mode. Contemporary boredom and competitive engagement in high-technological communication networks inform how we might direct digital publics to find alternative pathways to sociality.