Users of the app, sick of prying parents and having to look perfect, are creating private secondary profiles where they can just be themselves. It’s a real #nofilter

Name: Finstagrams.

Age: Young.

Appearance: Elusive.

Don’t tell me – Instagram accounts for fish. No

Hipsters named Finn? No

Hipsters named Finstagram? No, but don’t give them ideas.

What, then? A Finstagram – or Finsta – is a fake Instagram account.

Aren’t all Instagram accounts, with their carefully curated posts and poses, in a very real sense fake? Yeah, sure, thanks Baudrillard. These are fake in the sense of secret – they are private, locked accounts set up in addition to main accounts, with access granted only to a chosen few followers.

Why? So that more natural, less effortful posts can be put up and read.

So … the fake account allows for more reality? Yes. It’s where you can post ugly selfies, private jokes, personal rants, pictures of outfits you’re genuinely seeking advice on, screenshots of funny family group texts, pictures of yourself in the middle of a good cry, that sort of thing, to a relatively sympathetic audience.

Why would you take a photograph of yourself in the middle of a good cry? Wouldn’t you just … be busy having a good cry? Because no true emotion exists without documentation.

I see. And who gets to see these lives in the digital-raw? Followers are generally kept in the low double figures. The Finsta-owner will alert those she wishes to the account’s presence by following them from it, then accepting them when (if – but that’s a whole other can of worms) they follow her back.

Her? It is usually girls and young women who have Finstas – probably because the pressure on them to look good in their public posts is more intense than it is for boys.

Ah well. It’s good to know they can relax somewhere. In my day we did it in real life, but I guess that’s not an option these days. Indeed. But you do still have to beware of Finsta-snitches.

I’m sorry? People who infiltrate the account, or friends who were accepted but with whom you then fall out, and who re-post your private stuff in public forums.

Dear God, it never ends, does it? It does not. It does not.

Do say: The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending we lay waste our powers; - / Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!.../ For this, for everything, we are out of tune

Don’t say: #Wordsworth #wordvomit