In the app store, Instagram describes itself as “a free and simple way to share your life and keep up with other people.” In theory, social media is a great way to bring people together on a different platform, but years of misuse has turned it into something else entirely. It has created another whole world of facades and a language of likes and followers. This evolution of Instagram has led to the creation of finsta, a fake Instagram account, where users post photos that they normally could not post on their rinsta (real Instagram).

A rant is the most infamous of all finsta posts and usually the reason people don’t like finstas. Users have been known to post crying selfies with excessive captions that recap every single thing that has gone wrong in their day. But it is more private than a rinsta. If you find a finsta post too annoying or attention seeking, that just means you find the person behind the account to be annoying. True friends listen to each others problems and respond. The solution is simple: unfollow. Social media makes it easy to cut out negative or toxic content from your feed.

On the other hand, a positive finsta can brighten your day. The user might screenshot a post they found funny or something funny that happened to them; a silly selfie with an anecdote in the caption, a video of themselves and friends, or a face-swap gone wrong are just few of many examples.

The main reason I have a finsta (please don’t try to find me) is to ask questions and offer advice. For example, the user can upload several photos of dress options and followers can comment which is their favorite. If I desperately need assistance on my chemistry lab, I know I can post on finsta and that one of my followers is bound to help me out.

Finsta users interact directly with followers; followers who aren’t random people, but close friends. The follower count on finsta typically ranges from 50-100 followers, whereas some rinstas have over 1,000 followers. Finsta followers are friends who are there to support, laugh, or help you, not distant friends-of-friends who will judge every pixel of your post.

The fact that most people have both a finsta and rinsta just goes to show that no one is themselves on their rinsta. Each photo is carefully filtered and each caption cleverly planned. Rinsta is a place where every detail matters- likes, appearance, filter, captions. That pressure is lifted in finstas, which is what makes them so fun and interesting. Stalking a person’s finsta will say a lot more about themselves than their rinsta.