Two Deliverances: High. and Whirr

On "120 Minutes" nostalgia, quasi-cancellation and nu-shoegaze's endless vista of mids.

Instagram is completely cooked. It’s not just a shit app, but a shit app on purpose. The timeline is nonsensical, Reels are “what if Meta ran TikTok,” and that’s not even a thought exercise, that’s what is actually happening. These are things that I know are true and everyone else knows are true, to the point where it barely requires any scrutiny or further explanation. Remember how, only a few years ago, watching an episode of It’s Always Sunny was something that took 23 minutes, the perfect amount of time one needs to unplug before going about the rest of their day? But now Hulu runs 90-second blocks of ads, seemingly at random, and it now feels like watching a syndicated re-run in 1995. It’s a time investment and one third of it is actively annoying. That’s the closest thing I can compare to the user experience of Instagram in 2025.

And yet, if I hate using Instagram, I only have myself to blame.

Because unlike Hulu running commercials for Hims or psoriasis medication or whatever, Instagram feeds me nothing but Simpsons clip accounts, Seiko watch ads and the latest J. Crew sales. Compare that to what X gives me on “For You” (Elon Musk and other assorted blue checks) or Bluesky on “Popular With Your Friends” (music writer accounts I muted on X). Comparatively, it’s not such a bad deal.

For example, the account 120 Revisited, which is pretty self-explanatory. Unlike most 90s nostalgia accounts, I can actually learn something from this page even if I’m intimately familiar with the source material, since I don’t have as many formative experiences watching “120 Minutes” compared to “Headbanger’s Ball” or “Yo! MTV Raps.” It can be something as simple as, “wow, I didn’t know they made a video for ‘Gold Soundz,’ but it looks exactly like I’d expect.”