Instagrannies

I recently enjoyed brunch with eight of my dearest high school pirates/friends of all time.  It was wondrous in that I just picked a date, sent out an Evite, and everyone showed-up.  Absent were the thirty e-mails it usually takes us to pick a date.  Plus three Doodle calendars.  And fifteen more e-mails to choose a location.  Miraculous!  If I could have gotten my two Washingtonians and one Angelino, it would have been a hole in one.

I just want to pause for a moment and feel grateful that I still have 11 girlfriends from high school.  *sigh*  OK, moving on…

So, at this brunch is where I got the assignment to be in charge of the Facebook outreach portion of our 2015 high school reunion planning.  Thus the never-ending references to that whole business.  Clearly there was no interview for this appointment.  As luck would have it, I found the breakfast conversation kept winding its way back to Instagram.  As in, “Oh Jaimie, you didn’t see that picture I took?  It’s on Instagram.  I don’t do much on Facebook anymore.”  Blah, blah, blah.  Like James said when I joined, “Facebook is over.”  And that’s exactly when I generally decide I can trust a technology isn’t’t just going to *poof* disappear and take all my time invested with it.

Now, I think it’s important that I create a little inventory of my social networking skills… if for no other reason than at some point I might need to modernize my resume to keep up with those young millennial whipper-snappers:

I collect colleagues on LinkedIn.  I have a Twitter account because I wanted to get on Pinterest and have unknowingly been tweeting all my pins to Jill.  I do my fantasy shopping and house design on Pinterest.  I blog.  Oh, and I now do the Facebook.  Plus I can create an Evite and a Doodle calendar.  That’s six things!  (If those last two count.)  But I’m told Tmblr is better and I should do Instagram instead and the other day I took a survey and it gave me a list of at least thirty social networking gizmos as ways I could “stay connected” with this organization.

Now back to my friends.  I’ve begun to notice a clear and consistent divergence in my best-friends-till-I’m-dead-and-gone group.  They are either little social media floozies, I mean connoisseurs, or part of a new group I’m going to call the Instagrannies.  Clearly I am not a connoisseur so I’m not going to attempt to describe the key characteristics of 75% of my social media savvy friends.  If they still are my friends after that floozie faux pas…

I am, however, the founder and president of the Instagrannies.  Here’s my start to our charter and founding principles:

• We believe cell phones are primarily for making calls, not receiving them.  Don’t expect us to pick-up.
• We believe everyone else has a cell phone so if you really need to find us, learn who we work with so you can call them or our significant others.  They know how to find us.  They carry cell phones.
• We believe one must be discerning as to what one might be signing-up for.  We recognize our capacity, or lack thereof, for more “projects.”  Yes, checking updates on Facebook is a project.
• We believe in finishing what we’ve started.  We have a never ending to-do list that involves organizing our photos and upgrading our Christmas decorations.  Joining more social media sites can’t be added to the list until these things are finally done.
• We’re comfortable with not finding out the sex of our unborn children.  I don’t know how this last one fits in, but I think this is a potential insight as to what separates the Connoiseurs from the Grannies?

We, therefore, the representatives of the Instagrannies, in antisocial media, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Zuck of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these internet networks, solemnly publish and declare, that these technogrannies are, and of right ought to be free and independent from mobile devices; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Facebook, and that all connection between them and Instagram, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent grannies, they have full power to use their significant others’ accounts for clandestine research, to blog once a year, to shop on Etsy, to freeload off of Yelp reviews, and to do all other acts and things which independent grannies may of right do.  And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Pinterest, we mutually pledge to each other our snail mail addresses, our paper money and our land lines.

I hereby indoctrinate Alesia, Emily and Sarah into the club.

How ironic that the Instagrannies will likely never read this.  And if they do, certainly won’t ‘comment’…

From left to right: Connoisseur, Connoisseur, Instagranny (Treasurer), Digital Native, Connoisseur, Instagranny (Founder), Connoisseur, Connoisseur; (not pictured) Connoisseur