Get ready, world: on Feb. 5, I, Max Minogue, got an Instagram.

This is after years of pretending I was better than that. Such a waste of time! So egotistical! I was such a great person for resisting this millennial trend. So what happened?

For the first two years of high school, I avoided social media like Instagram for this kind of pseudo-intellectual reason.

After all, everybody knows that social media is what prevents people from the face-to-face conversation that our grandparents used to have. But once I got past that rather pretentious phase, I was starting junior year.

I knew all too well that I would waste hours of precious time, and so I held off.

By hold off, of course, I mean rely on my friends to text me the screenshots of the more important or infamous posts (shout out to everybody’s favorite NT alum’s finsta with more than 1,000 followers).

But now I’m a second semester senior. So, I treated myself the free app that I’ve been avoiding for too long, after being pressured into it.

One thing I found, at least upon the first impression, is that Trevians are pretty friendly people on the Gram. It was like being welcomed onto AIM way back in 7th grade but without any of the horrible middle school cringe.

The Monday after my Insta debut, I was surprised to find people not greeting me with the regular “Hey” in the hallways, but rather with a cheerful “Welcome to Instagram!”

It felt like I was being indoctrinated into a cult full of filters and followers, and I was more okay with it than I expected.

There’s plenty to be said for the evils of social media, but most of it has already been said.

In the news and recent studies, there’s evidence of social media addiction, and the bad mental side effects of the extensive use of apps like Instagram. But that’s true of anything done without moderation.

It’s also a huge waste of time, but I haven’t felt like it’s been overtaking anything important. If anything, I’ve just been on Instagram using time that I would otherwise be wasting on Netflix, Snapchat, or doing anything else equally pointless.

I’m just generally not a productive human being, and that’s more my fault than my phone’s.

Then there are shows like Black Mirror, where in one episode society revolves around an app where people rate each and every interaction with others. A high ranking out of five stars always corresponds to prestige and real life perks in the show, and thus has obvious adverse side effects.

That’s probably the real-world equivalent to being Instagram famous, which as an occupation is still mind boggling to me.

I won’t pretend that Instagram isn’t many times used for this exact reason, to amass a certain amount of likes and comments and have that high ratio of likes-to-followers.

Being fed likes after a new post obviously feels pretty great, and I love indulging myself in some fresh new comments and followers.

But in the end, Instagram is all a matter of how you use it. I can use Instagram as the means to base my self confidence on, or I can use it to find memes. I can focus on the rinsta scene or the underground world of finstas.

On the topic of finstas, people need to recognize that finstas are for friends and for actually cringe worthy and uncomfortable content.

I shouldn’t be getting follows from finstas that consist of decent selfies and captions like “I just ate an entire roll of girl scout cookies, I’m so fat!” That just shames the people who already do that on the regular.

Most importantly, I can use Instagram to pretend to future college roommates and friends that I’m a normal human with normal human interactions.

Follow for follow, please and thank you.