How Instagram basic are you?

To misquote Prince, it’s been seven hours and 15 days / Since you posted anything on Instagram, and you’re haemorrhaging followers by the minute. Something’s got to give and it can’t be your breakfast because it’s only marmalade on toast and anyway, the plate is chipped. Wildly, you look around your room. Nope. Nothing. You glance out of the window. Just bins. Why can’t you live on a Notting Hill street with multi-coloured houses? So you make like everyone else and post something so unutterably dreary that it’s a wonder it doesn’t get reported for being bland. So how Instagram basic are you?

Your Flowers

Wow. Someone sent you flowers. You must be really special. Almost as special as the other 35928465970 people who got sent flowers and posted pics of them today. While the temptation to capture their beauty for all eternity is strong, a 6cm x 6cm square is never going to be the ideal medium with which to do so. No, not even with a Mayfair filter, a Tom Dixon vase and a shaft of sunlight spilling through the window.

Your Drake Gig

Congratulations: you know someone who works in PR who managed to swing plum seats to the Drake gig. Just like in December when the same friend (well, not ‘friend’ exactly, more ‘barely sufferable contact you keep in with because it means you get to go to The 02 for free’) managed to swing plum seats to the Adele gig. I’m sure I speak for all of Instagram when I say that I can’t wait until November and we’re all treated to pictures of you watching Hamilton. What do you mean, you’re not allowed to take pictures in the theatre? Not even a quick one, without a flash, like Lily Allen did at the Kate Bush gig? Oh well. You’ll just have to settle for taking a selfie outside the Victoria Palace Theatre instead. Don’t forget to Instagram the tickets fanned out on your bed the day before, though. Cannot. Wait.

Your Quirky Interior Feature

As we all know by now (because we keep being told), interiors are the new breakfasts, and coffee tables the new #avotoast. But if there’s one thing Instagram has revealed, it’s that for every unique design feature you incorporate into your home, you can bet that several hundred other people have already thought of it before you — and done it better. You thought you were alone in having settled on Hague Blue to paint your living room walls? Wrong. Hague Blue is the new Elephant’s Breath, as popular as magnolia in the Nineties. Still, at least nobody else has an Eames rocking chair. At least your fireplace full of logs is a bit different. And the driftwood propped up in the corner next to your bed. And the cluster frame of family photos lining the stairs. And your God Save the Queen cushion.

Your Kids In Fancy Dress

Bless. You think your kid is the only kid in the world who looks cute in a dinosaur/fairy/Harry Potter costume. You think that photographing him holding his extremely tall and/or fat dad’s hand, long range, walking through the park, is a hilarious visual gag that no one else has thought of before.

Your Gallery Visit

We get it. You’re into art. You’re intelligent. You probably went to Oxford. You don’t do #TBT posts, you do galleries. And then post pictures of the pictures. So meta. And also so crap because Hockney’s A Bigger Splash doesn’t really have the same impact on Instagram, does it? Well done for visiting the Whitechapel, but the intricacy of Paolozzi’s textiles get kind of lost on the grid. Dude, put down the phone and enjoy the art.

Your SMS Conversation

Yup, you’re the only person alive whose mum is unintentionally hilarious.

Your Tall Building Shot From Low Down

However often you see it, the Flatiron building manages never to look basic, tbf.

Your Quote

Life was much less annoying when people confined their motivational quotage to fridge magnets. That way blinding revelations like Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels stayed where they belonged — near the yoghurt. Now Instagrammers are sharing their wisdom with the world, and no pronouncement is too banal. Guess what? Your Only Limit is You! Provided You Work Like a Boss, that is. There are only two certainties to be gleaned from such quotes: 1) They’ll be in an ugly font, like Brush Script; 2) they’ll tell you nothing you didn’t know already. Then again, You Can’t Make Everybody Happy — You Aren’t a Jar of Nutella.

Illustrations by Joe Mclaren