Fake Instagrams, real selves

Finstas are extra-private accounts on social media used for posting unfiltered content

Modern motivational quotes refer to Instagram as a highlight reel of someone’s life. The social media platform has earned the reputation of a place where one posts only the good stuff; the snapshots of a perfect life.

But a surprising move to authenticity has sprung up on Instagram with a rather ironic moniker -- the fake Instagram, better known as finsta.

As opposed to your main account, finstas are places for unfiltered content. “Initially the whole point was that these accounts are kept a secret from everyone other than your close friends. So you’d use a username that wouldn’t be traced back to you to hide your identity,” says Jagriti Jain.

She started a finsta because her main account had a lot of family members and other acquaintances with whom she wasn’t comfortable sharing certain pictures. “My finsta is a closed group of my closest friends with whom I’m comfortable,” she says.

“My public account was the only one I had until about a year and a half ago,” says Mohammed Asadullah, a student at NIFT. But once when he received hateful comments and snide remarks for posting something personal on the account, he decided to start a finsta where he could be himself without judgement.

“I didn’t want to make my main account private as it’s where I post most of my work, and companies expect artistes to have an Instagram portfolio,” he explains. He adds that this is another one of the reasons why he decided to keep his personal life away from the public account.

The story is similar for photographer Tanya Soji. “My main account slowly transformed into a portfolio of my work, but I didn’t have a lot of followers so I didn’t see the need to create a separate account,” she says. But once she started gaining followers, she realised that her personal posts and stories took away attention from her work.

This is when she started a personal account. “I still had things to share about my life with my friends, I wanted to tell them where I am and how I’m doing through the platform and the finsta was my solution,” she says.

For Avani Kudalkar, her main account too was private, but it had family, friends and acquaintances. “It also has a certain theme and aesthetic that I wanted to maintain, but on the other hand I had a large number of not-so-perfect pictures I wanted to share. That’s when I decided to set up a finsta,” she says.

She initially sent out requests to a lot of people who follow her on my main account, but over time she’s filtered her followers. “I realised that I only want close friends on my account, this way I can be my most authentic self without having to think twice,” she explains.

Public personalities have secret finstas too

Aparna Gopinath, an actress with over 60,000 followers on her verified Instagram says that the public account was actually the second one she created. “I had a private account for family and friends, but once I started acting someone told me that I needed to have an open account. That’s when I created the second one,” she says.

But unlike others she says there’s not a lot of difference in what she posts. “The reason I have two accounts is more to do with the profession I’m in. It’s nice to have a space where it’s just people who are close to you,” she explains.

Author and activist, Gurmehar Kaur, too feels the same way. “My main account which is public now, used to be private earlier. But there were still a lot of people following me on it. So just before I released my first book, I made that one public and started maintaining a finsta for more private posts,” she says.

She says that having a finsta doesn’t mean she’s not herself on her main account, “I wanted to share parts of my personal life and express myself on the platform without thinking too much about what I was posting or worrying about being,” says Gurmehar, who was thrust into the public eye due to a public Facebook post that went viral.

“My finsta just has a lot of ugly selfies and ranting that I don’t think needs to be seen by the 80,000 odd people that follow my main account,” she adds.