Because it amuses you to see time pass and to be judged? We asked you and we tried to understand.
When you scroll through Instagram, it remains quite rare today not to come across a thriving photo dump. While stories have largely replaced the function of the feed, we still love photo dumpsthese carousels born in 2021 after the paralyzing boredom of confinement and which bring together, in a falsely random way, images of our unvarnished daily life.
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A bit like the Finsta, the photo dump follows fairly simple rules: it involves throwing away (“to dump”), getting rid of these photos which could end up in the trash (“dump”). These carousels of another kind are not supposed to be thematic but chaotic, your images should not necessarily have any relationship with each other and should ideally be part of different temporalities. So, no, your carousel on your recent trip to New York does not constitute a photo dump : this one would be more comparable to the good old Facebook photo album from 2008, in which you threw all the slammed photos from your 2009 New Year, or from that trip to India with your mother.
Little more in the methodology of photo dump : you obviously shouldn’t forget to write your caption in lowercase, to show that you really don’t give a damn. Otherwise, the illusion would be imperfect. As our tech and nihilism journalist Pierre Bazin says so well: “The photo dump does not exist. In the 2000s, we put as much gel in our hair as possible to look disheveled. THE dumpit’s the Instagram version: a lot of effort to make people believe that we don’t do it. You know what the real ones are dumps ? It’s the boomers who post blurry photos on Facebook without intention, who post Insta stories while sitting on their phones. That is the essence of dumpthe essence of l’effortless.”
Instagram happily exploits the advent (or resurgence) of photo dumpsince the stars have gotten into it, as evidenced by this pseudo-carefree carousel of chaotic post-breakup published by Jennifer Lopez at the start of the school year. Recently, the social network has started to add aesthetic-practical changes, such as seeing a blurry preview of the next photoand to reward the nice people who post carousels with better engagement (3.1 times superior to traditional publications). Meta has also lifted the limit of ten photos per carousel, to twenty. It had the same effect on us as a freshly unbridled scooter ride: we felt like the king of oil.
Why do we love posting photo dumps ? Why are we posting more than ever? Why is it entertaining to swipe twenty photos of a stranger’s mundane daily life? To probe the deep reasons for these manias and anxieties which haunt our feedswe interviewed a fairly large sample of photo dumpers. A look back at a well-established trend, which says much more about our anxieties than about our aesthetics.
Make or break so as not to flooder
Most of our photo bumpers started in “copying others” and got caught up in the game. This is the case of Lucie, 34 years old, who had “fear of flooding and at the same time”, who had “want to post several photos” in his feed. The photo dump seemed to him to be the perfect solution: it is an effective remedy against the incessant flow of images. For Simon, 25, who doesn’t like posting on social networks much, this is the ideal compromise to not spend his days on Instagram and feel less pressure to publish: “I have lots of dormant photos, an Instagram account without posts for a very long time and the solution to photo dump allows you to catch up without having to post lots of times.”
However, for anyone who still doubts it, the photo dump often follows a precise editorial line: you have to vary the typologies of images, wait for a significant event and “don’t forget a few photos of yourself, otherwise there will be no likes”adds Lucie, 34 years old. “You must always start your dump with a photo of yourself, that’s the rule.” This is what Coumbis, 34, also does, who always begins her carousels with a photo of herself, and continues in a well-organized manner with “a landscape, a photo of food and the thing every cool girl does: a photo on a white background with a little quote bitchy and a little powerful“.
For Biljana, 23 years old, the same, it’s about showing off a facade of “cool girlwith selfies, art and Instagrammability”. For Fran, 25, it’s a nice way to “remind the world that we can be pretty” and post “photos of oneself in a less cringe” than an isolated image while for Cheynnes, 29, it is more about showing “successions of failed photos”. “I also like to post photos of myself where I’m not wearing makeup, where it’s blurry and poorly framed. I like to go a little bit against what’s Instagrammable but I’m afraid that even by doing that I’m actually following a trend.”
THE photo dumps summarily tell who we are, freeze our daily life like a mood board and capture a self-image curated at time T. “It’s like a public Google Drive,” for Jules, 20 years old, or “like a wordless mini diary. Your photo dumpit’s a bit like your open letter to the world”, according to Coumbis. This open letter, for Lise, 28 years old, resonates less positively than for Coumbis: “I post like I don’t care, but it usually takes about twenty minutes, so it’s really bullshit. What I like is that it still takes on the color of my mood of the moment. And my favorite Pantone shade for dumpsI think it’s: winter depression.” Everyone has their own style. The dump is a self-expression. When for some, it is bad bitch, for others, it is depressed style. There’s something for everyone.
From satisfaction to pressure
For some, it’s a game. Coumbis feels pure satisfaction in curater ses photo dumps : “I think you feel the same satisfaction as a rapper when he leaves the studio: you did the job. You have found the perfect intro photo, the perfect sequence of images, the ideal number of photos to tell your story and the caption perfect“, she says.
For others, it’s an added stress. Lucie tells us that despite the relaxation, the photo dump adds pressure to his use of Instagram: “JI realize that it stresses me out, I put pressure on myself to make it perfect when I think that people ultimately don’t give a damn.” And she’s right, you shouldn’t worry about a photo dump. Same story for Biljana: “Stress comes from being seen, observed and judged, rather than admired.”
Redwane, 27, for his part, criticizes the trappings involved in such use: “We are all professional provers and that has taken on more and more space, we all want to show that we are good, that we do things, that we experience things, that we see things. It allows you to anger exes by showing them that you’re super cool, super stylish, or that you’re chatting with Katy Perry [rires].” For Simon too, the photo dump has a lot to do with “the desire to prove, to show that we do lots of things, that we live” : “It’s not totally unhealthy but it pretty much sums up some of our uses of social media.” Although he doesn’t post many posts, he nevertheless enjoys admiring those of others, “because it allows us to understand a little more who they are” : “It’s quite visually satisfying, the colors, styles, atmospheres mix and form an interesting little artistic piece in the feed.”
From commodification to the anxiety of passing time
The use of photo dump is more the prerogative of Millennials and that’s where the problem lies. THE photo dump confronts us every day with a disastrous observation. We have become Gen Z boomers. They prefer to stick to Stories or don’t have an Instagram account at all. We, new boomers, only follow aging teenagers and at 30, we still find a certain satisfaction in curater a gallery of oneself, when perhaps we should be busying ourselves elsewhere. It’s very sad.
The photo dump seems to take us back to the origins of Instagram and social networks in the 2010s, when it was still about (over)sharing, and no longer about simply “being” and “appearing to be”. Today, it is part of a less innocent logic than in the beginnings of Instagram, which has become the temple of sponsorship, branding, influence, the feeding of algorithms and the incentive to feed the beast .
Biljana makes a very interesting link with the Instagram of the past and the cannibalization of brand discourse: “Our daily life becomes the advertising campaign, the individual, the product. With the application of brand vocabulary to individual network users (the rebrandTHE eras…), the photo dump helps to essentialize us into an aesthetic that can be marketed. Bringing together aesthetic photos, curated while appearing falsely spontaneous, we create a visual identity which contrasts with the Instagram posts of 2012, truly improvised, published at the moment. The displayed spontaneity of photo dump is ultimately just a facade.”
What the photo dump said about us, our habits, our society? Lise has her own idea: “It shows that we are even crazier than before. This is the famous ‘I don’t have time, I do too many things’ who makes a featuring with ‘I’m too cool to pay attention to what I post’while the person doing his dump is usually in a panic attack, caught in a vice that looks suspiciously like a mix of LinkedIn and Bumble.” Thomas, 28, shares the same thoughts: “For me, the photo dumpit’s just a way of showing exactly the same things that we showed in 2016 but with a little condescending energy of ‘I’m too busy to spend time posting every day so I dump to save 3 minutes (which I would spend on TikTok instead)’.”
Despite these pretenses, some people strive to make them seasonal, others monthly or one-off. The publication of an isolated image in one’s feed has become has beeneven shameful: “J“I feel like I’m exposing myself when I post in my feed”, Lise tells us. Jules explains to us that the photo dumping “allows us to remember moments spent with our friends, the state of mind we are in and see how we are evolving” : “I like the idea that it’s a checkpoint of my life. A group photo is so significant of collective evolution. If you keep the same entourage, you see everyone change over time and it’s too, so satisfying to see.”
Sometimes, the action of not posting comes from an anxiety of seeing a frozen moment, which perhaps defines us too much and locks us into a time that we would like to see slip away quickly. Rayène, 29 years old, started photo dumping after disappearing from his feed for two years, but the idea of posting still makes me anxious: “I went through periods of depression which blocked me from making publications that stick.” More broadly, the photo dump questions us about what constitutes an event, takes stock of what there is to remember about this life that passes and which frightens us because it moves so quickly, freezes in images our search for lost time.
