What we feel comfortable sharing in a social network may change or evolve over time. What was once commonplace to post now becomes cringeworthy and "not another one of those" moments.

Aesthetic inflation is general increase in the baseline expectations of quality and style of content shared within a social network. 📈 The photo you may have posted in a heartbeat four years ago isn't something that you would feel compelled to have other's see.

Slowly but surely aesthetic inflation tends to root out the raw, candid, and whacky visuals that may have thrived in the early days. Instagram Stories are a clear case of a format being affected by this. Often times the thought, curation, and effort put into creating a Story rivals that of the 'permanent' posts below.

Changes

New expectations for the baseline content can occur due to:

• Subtle or explicit modeling after other user group's behavior
  • Brands, 'influencers', and sub-segments (artists, athletes)
  • These groups have natural incentives to be more striking and interesting
• More accessible and rich creation tools reducing the barrier to creating 'good looking' content
  • See photo editors, photo manipulators, style formats (Unfold)
• Increasing context collapse
  • Convergence of many personal selfs forcing your profile (IG handle) to be a public catch-all for multiple relationship types (friend, stranger, co-worker, etc)
  • This naturally pressures you into accommodating for the next pair of eyes
• Law of Messaging: "All apps with DMs eventually become dating apps"
  • Aspirational and rightfully so
  • IG: 100% of who you want to be. 10% of who you really are.

Inflation

Aesthetic Inflation can occur in two ways.

Content

The actual scenery, objects, experiences, or landscapes within a photo. Latte art won't fly as a 2019 post.