The Casserole Connection

I imagine anyone who comes across my Instagram account is immediately perplexed when they see random casserole comments on my feed or when I screenshot them in my stories.

Every so often, I’ll re-share the original post for context so they’re in on the joke. It’s been years now since I originally posted it but on a weekly basis I still have people sending me casserole content. I have some serious trolls who follow me and I love it.

Some folks wonder if I get tired of it or if it annoys me and honestly it doesn’t. I definitely didn’t plan to be associated with casseroles of all things but in a world where we are striving for connection, I value what it brings to my online space.

I don’t want to push content out, pieces of myself, that are void of humanity.

Buy this. Buy that.

Do this. Do that.

It’s robotic almost.

Creators have taken themselves out of their content. Faceless accounts are being pushed as an ideal way to grow followers without actually showing up and there’s a rinse and repeat formula that you too can access through this $497 masterclass of bullshit.

Faceless pages? Bruh.

Maybe it’s an age thing I don’t know?

There are a lot of changes across IG for the decade plus that I’ve been on the platform and I’ve rolled with the punches for most of them but, I can’t get behind the faceless page trend. How do you connect with someone if you don’t even show up? I’m supposed to make a connection with your wrists? Who the hell even are you?

That’s why I don’t get tired of the casserole jabs and jokes. It’s just one way people have connected with me. One disgusting, hodge podged baking dish of crunchy topped connection.

I toyed with the idea of deleting my account not too long ago. It wasn’t a burnout thing I just wasn’t motivated to put anything on my feed. To be honest, I still feel that way most days. The longer I stayed away, the less I felt like posting. My feed was full of “Amazon faves”, Must Haves, and countless contradicting recommendations on “how to grow your account to a bajillion without even trying.”

It became harder to find the people, and the content, that actually inspired me and made me want to engage with people. I love getting recommendations for stuff but like, sprinkle in some regular shit too ya know?

And maybe I’m in the minority there. Maybe people don’t care? The advice we get is keep things short because everyone has a short attention span and you gotta hook them in quick before they scroll on to the next post.

Listen….

I don’t care.

I’ll be honest, I don’t want to be a part of your doom scroll. I want to have bingeable content. A stop by and stay awhile type of account you know?

As I became more disenchanted with the whole thing, I started to tweak my feed by unfollowing people and pages that I no longer resonated with me. My friend Albie just recently mentioned completing a digital purge over on her substack and let me tell you, it takes some time but slowly and surely my algorithm is showing me what I want to see.

Highly recommend you do the same.

I also had to stop and think about what I was putting out and if it aligned with my priorities and season of life. Did I need to burn it all down or did I have to just focus on the casserole connections?

Listen, people are willing to follow and engage with AI influencers. Talking to them and leaving comments as if they actually exist which blows my mind. So maybe people don’t care about the connection or they’re satisfied with artificial ones. I dont know

For me and this corner of the internet, I’m going to assume we all want a bit more substance.