Why I keep screenshotting Instagram reels
Plus: CHIHUAHUA GIVEAWAY
If you communicate with me in any other format, you’ll know I’m partial to sending unsolicited screenshots of Instagram reels. I regret to inform you that the images I send in the group chat are only the tip of the iceberg. I have a folder on my phone with hundreds of screenshots of these trickle-down TikToks. My taste is discerning, but I cannot and will not stop.
To build my collection, I scroll Instagram long enough to hit a suggested reel, which is usually about 7 seconds. If part of the reel calls to me, I time the perfect screenshot, crop it, and hold it close to my heart. I refer to this process as harvesting.
The harvested images are low quality, often moments of blurred movement. There’s sometimes some non sequitur text. Overlays showing the number of likes and comments. Often, more often than you would think, the hand of a baby.
To discover the root of my fascination, I began categorizing, as I am wont to do. What follows are the main types of reel screenshots I harvest, what I get out of each, and an attempt to understand the overall drive.
Screenshot types
Mommy Blogger Pontificating (MBP)
What they are: MBP screenshots show a child, often with their face obscured, engaged in some sort of activity with some borderline nonsensical text. These come from reels whose purpose is much the same: capture some childhood slice of life while the mom films and thinks up a poignant or didactic text overlay.
I mean no shade to the mommy bloggers, except for the exploitative ones, which I guess are a lot of them. But these reels produce some of the funniest, most unhinged harvests. An MBP can really turn your day around.
Why I harvest them: MBP reels always include text in the video, and usually a lot of it. The words are often imperative, all-knowing, or have a certain Memory-Making Gravitas to them. And the child? Either faceless and staring moodily into the distance or taking up the whole damn screen with that head. These elements combine to make MBPs extremely fulfilling to capture, crop, and take out of context.
Beautiful Comment
What they are: Beautiful Comment screenshots feature a screenshot from any type of reel and a comment on said reel. The vibe of the result varies, but it is often obvious, religious, or jarringly personal.
This is the most generative of the screenshot types, since you’re curating not just the moment in the reel to capture but the comment with which to pair it. The number of Likes the comment has can add a fun rhetorical wrinkle as well.
Why I harvest them: Beautiful Comment screenshots are the closest thing to Yahoo! Answers I’ve found since the death of Yahoo! Answers. People really live their truths in reel comments, and I find the earnestness life-affirming. The added layer of curation is also engaging.
Baby Hand
What they are: Perhaps my favorite genre, Baby Hand screenshots are any screenshots of a baby hand. Sometimes the hand is the focus of the reel from which it was taken, sometimes it’s not. I particularly enjoy these when the hand is sticking out of strollers so the sidewalk is a blur beneath them. Some of these babies are ZOOMIN’.
Why I harvest them: Representation matters. I identify deeply with grubby hands grasping things for dear life.
Animal Emoting
What they are: Screenshots of animals I can use as reactions when texting.
I admit this is the most millennial/i can has cheezburger category. The lack of text is what saves them, and me, from ruin.
Why I harvest them: Novelty, mainly. Reels are actually the only way I can reliably find new animal pics now. It also feels kind of similar to making pogs.
Unnecessary Context/“POV”
What they are: Screenshots of the Unnecessary Context/“POV” subtype are any screenshots that make you say “….okay.”
Because reels must be at least 5 seconds long, and most see maximum engagement closer to the 1-minute mark, people really stretch their content out sometimes. This leads to reels with a ton of filler frames containing stuff that doesn’t really need to exist. And, often, a gross misuse of the term “POV.”
Why I harvest them: Watching these reels usually has an uncanny, sometimes frustrating, effect. Harvesting or not, I’m always slightly on edge waiting for this person to get to the point or say a sentence that makes sense. Screenshotting the moment(s) of disconnect feels like gaining the upper hand, if only for a blink.
Non Sequitur Slay
What they are: These ones feel like intrusive thoughts. Unlike the previous category, Non Sequitur Slays capture moments in a reel that were never meant to set the stage for anything.
They come from content creators who prefer a more progressive disclosure. You’re really along for the ride with these people. Sometimes, that ride is “Tortilla Chips.”
Why I harvest them: My gravitation toward these is probably just nostalgia for Vine, where we were thrown into the deep end of words and images for 6 seconds at a time. Out of all my screenshot categories, these are the ones that most clearly remain smaller parts of a larger scene. This energy is intriguing and a little Dada.
The Sacred Mysteries
What they are: Sacred Mysteries are any textless images that emit otherworldly wisdom. The potential to harvest a specimen of this category is what keeps me going. You never know when you’ll come upon one.
Why I harvest these: They make me feel closer to God.
Why?
Why do I like this? Why am I like this?
A few hypotheses based on this investigation:
Serendipity—Harvesting relies on the perfect alignment of algorithm management, timing, cropping, and curating. When it’s successful, it feels like finding a potential meme in the wild and keeping it a secret. The internet generally feels both less wild and less secretive now, so this is notable.
Curation as control—Turning never-ending suggested reels into a contained, static, and selective set of images helps me regain a semblance of control. It’s like bottling industrial runoff and arranging the bottles on my windowsill <3
Subversion—I enjoy biting the algorithm that feeds me, removing an image from both its context and its intended ecosystem/panopticon. I also like the roughness of the images themselves and the bootlegginess of the whole process.1
Being a WALL-E-ass artifact lover—Context is everything and also nothing! I like not having (or just removing) all the context and enjoying myself anyway. The larger whole is lost, and that somehow adds something. The image feels more precious for being fragmented.
Adoration of humanity lol—People are so varied. The ways we document and communicate are so varied. I love archiving small snippets of all the bizarre shit we get up to.
Please let me know your favorite reel screenshots. We can cross-pollinate.
Also,
DO YOU WANT ONE OF THESE OIL PASTEL CHIHUAHUAS?
As a preorder incentive for Mall Water, I drew some internet chihuahuas.2
Yes, some of these are from reel screenshots.
If you would like to bring one of these drawings into your home, preorder Mall Water and fill out this form. It’s that easy!
I realize that removing these images from their intended ecosystem also removes the credit to the content creator. My rebuttal is as follows: 1) Most of these reel accounts are already not crediting the original creator and 2) I am not using these for anything other than my own chuckles.
References:
I’m feeling so inspired rn
Can I have a chihuahua?