Are you casual posting on social media? That ‘what I ate for lunch’ photo is too cringe, yo!

Now, hitting ‘share’ on a post can feel loaded. What if it looks try-hard? What if no one likes it? Posting on social media has evolved from sharing mundane moments and life updates to curated, aesthetically pleasing performances (mind you, blurry photos are now an aesthetic too, if done well). 

Divya Fofani, Faisal Farooque and Gurleen Gambhir

That casual posting has disappeared. Meals are only posted about if you are having them at the trendiest restaurant in the city; even then, it’s usually a reel about the experience there — almost like a review of the space. Or you can show off what you can do with AI, Canva, or the hundred other photo and video editing apps that exist. Posting a single photo is passé; it’s now all about photo dumps and videos that show your best life. 

Then there are others with zero posts on their feed. At first, they seem like bot accounts, but in reality, they are lurkers — happy to doom-scroll, comment, or respond on DMs, but never really post anything on their feed. An account on Instagram that goes by @seaweedbinch has zero posts and zero followers, and writes, “I literally have this account to chill in peace and not care about people who know me, finding me.” Ashwal, who goes by @_eak_k on Instagram, has only one post on his feed. He replies to our DM with, “But that’s any general user now,” when we ask him to explain why he puts off posting, indicating how common the practice is.

“Instagram is now entertainment,” says content creator Divya Fofani. “People use it like YouTube, to consume content. But these ‘lurkers’ will watch content, comment long paragraphs, share, or even DM,” he says, pointing out that they aren’t completely passive on the Internet. 

Are the ideal days of social media over? Representational pic/iStock

But why are users averse to posting? Perhaps for millennials, as they grow older, they prefer a private life. While for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who were still much younger when social media platforms first launched almost 15 years ago, the platforms have always been a part of their lives. 

The reality though, is that even content creators, despite social media being key to their profession, don’t plan their posts as much. “I know my post is not going to affect the economy or create some major change,” says Ruchika Lohiya, a content creator. “I think you have to post to be relevant. But truthfully, I post because I genuinely enjoy creating content. A day without creating or posting content feels incomplete to me.”

Fofani says that he tends to post intuitively as well. In fact, the only real planning is the logistics of shooting, and how to package the final video. For the Ganpati festival that just passed, Fofani took a 48-hour pilgrimage covering four corners of India. His idea was to draw Lord Ganesh’s face on the map and to showcase the unity that festivals bring. But, it was not planned; his flight tickets were booked merely four hours before he took off. “I always think: How do you do something crazy. I look at how strong the idea is, if I will enjoy the process, and try to approach things in a way that has never been done before,” explains Fofani, adding, “For a creator, consistency in posting is subjective. It could be five posts a month, or 15. You just need to balance the quantity with quality.” 

Gayatri Sapru, cultural anthropologist; (right) Ruchika Lohiya, content creator

Gurleen Gambhir, a content creator, admits that there is always a sense of pressure around posting regularly as a creator. “You have to constantly be on your toes; it shows with the audience as well. If I don’t post anything one day, my genuine followers check up on me.” 

It’s clear that creators need to maintain their feeds and be more conscious about their image on platforms. So, how do they separate life from work? Lohiya admits that she has a private account for close friends only. She says, “It’s very random and at times, cringe. I post a lot of group photos with friends, or even photos where I don’t look good, I’m comfortable posting them there.” Fofani adds, “I know a lot of people don’t repost or post birthday wishes because it’s cringe. People have an underlying worry about aesthetics. But I think everyone should be true to themselves and post as authentically as possible.” 

From a psychological lens, Dr Kedar Tilwe, consultant psychiatrist at Fortis Hospital, Mulund and Hiranandani Hospital, Vashi, says that people tend to project an idolised self-image on social media. As it’s impossible to have a life in 2025 without social media, he explains it’s natural for people to be conscious about what they post. “Earlier you could exist without constant surveillance. But younger generations don’t know a life without social media; WiFi is like air to them. Profiles are judged based on the number of likes on them. And, you could be known for one post for your entire life. People tend to amplify this in their mind. They tend to think that no likes on the post mean that they are not liked in real life. These amplified thoughts set in anticipated anxiety.” 

So is not posting the new way to exist on the Internet? Gayatri Sapru, founder of Folk Frequency and a cultural anthropologist, says, “It’s definitely a new form of existing; there is a word for it. They call it ambient intimacy,” sharing that this is the natural evolution of how we interact with media. “We get it [the term, ambient intimacy] in academia. We see it in the journals, but it’s actually a maturation of media relations. Lurking means that you feel at a certain point, it’s so much a part of your life that you are looking out of a window. That’s how much you are into social media and your content is now just other people’s lives.”

Sapru shares that the assumption that people are lurking on social media platforms because they are anxious, shy, or lack the self-confidence to post is not true. “It’s just how people evolve over time with social media,” she says. 

Another reason why posting is considered cringe is perhaps because many don’t want to be associated with the negative connotations that the term “influencer” carries. Faisal Farooque, a freelance columnist, has over 12,500 followers on Instagram but doesn’t think of himself as an influencer or creator, and refrains from posting about his family, friends, and personal life on any platform. “I believe that thoughtful posting brings thoughtful connections. I simply started this account because I thought I should express myself to meet like-minded people,” he says. “I know that Instagram is a photo platform, but beyond that it’s a way to connect and find your community.”

What Faisal admits to is another revelation: Posting is now cringe because people tend to see social media as serious platforms rather than spaces where they talk about their personal life. 

Sapru says, “How a platform makes people feel and therefore how people express on that platform, a huge part of it, is guided by creators and the kind of aesthetic they are choosing in that moment.” 

She explains that that when celebrities don’t post about serious issues, you immediately see regular users going quiet as well. “This has been written about endlessly, how the Kardashians have gone quiet and accounts with 100-million-plus followers are posting less and less. In fact, they only post when they have product launches now.”

This celebrity trend of posting less is signalling that social media is now serious business. “It’s very corporate now. It’s much harder for a regular person to copy that in which case it’s easier to just not post about anything,” says Sapru.

As for the difference between how different generations exist on social media, Sapru points out that for millennials and the older generations, the Internet came along much later in life, and perhaps now keeping up with the latest hashtag or trend feels too much. Meanwhile, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are curating their content to present an image of themselves. “They are incredibly conscious of the imprint that they are leaving on the Internet and how people look at them,” she says. 

Is the way ahead less posting, more lurking? That is unlikely. 

But as younger generations understand various social media platforms better, they know what to post where and how to behave on each platform. And, this is  what we are going to see more of. “What I see is that there will be more platforms. People are actively always looking for the next Instagram, or the next Discord. What just happened in Nepal [referring to the youth electing the prime minister on Discord], people really need to pay attention to the fact that younger people know how to fluidly move between all the platforms and how to use them for their perhaps best and worst use cases.”