Every now and then your film should discharge. It sounds disgusting, I know. But it’s actually quite beautiful.
When I was bored with my head in quarantine, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram for hours a day, I found unexpected joy in the dumps of photos posted by friends and celebrities.
What is a photo dump? Glad you asked. My dear friend and expert Instagram, Harry Hill , defines a dump pictures as “a series of five or more photos that are seemingly unrelated, taken from a camera roll in surplus to share several vibration both . ”
Photo dumps can include anything your heart desires. They let you post a selfie showing off your new haircut, a pic of a Chipwich you stressed out on your laptop, a pic of your TV paused on a Ted Lasso scene., the Louvre-worthy breakfast sandwich you ate two weeks ago, and a screenshot of a meme at the same time. You can use dumps to illustrate a single event – like a party or a reunion with friends – but you can also use them to summarize days, weeks, months, or entire years of your life. I did the latter by posting a throwback pic from 2020 to ring in the new year. It featured a post-scream election day selfie, my best quarantine meal, and a Connie Britton cameo. A real transport.
During quarantine – when no one had to attend or dress up Instagram-worthy events – photo dumps became particularly popular. They were also a great equalizer.
Neither of us had anything good to post, so we all silently agreed that it was okay to share random, raw behind-the-scenes looks in our lives.
Celebrities including Hilary Duff , Kylie Jenner , stallion Megan Thee , and UPS have jumped on the trend. (But not Rihanna. Rihanna literally said “fuck a pic. ”)
Chances are, you or someone you know has posted a photo dump at some point, even if you haven’t used the caption “photo dump”. Sophie Turner posted a photo with the caption, “I felt like we needed some content on this page… take advantage of those flashbacks,” Bella Hadid posted a caption, “Random!”, And Ariana Grande posted a few photo dumps with no captions . The presentation is up to you, but the content is generally consistent.
The images included in photo dumps are often mundane and unworthy of solo posts, which is exactly why I love them so much. Dumps says “fuck it” by pre-pandemic Instagram standards and replaces the overly thoughtful, heavily filtered, near-perfect posts we are used to seeing on social media with crappy, boring, and random albums. Photo dumps are low effort, low stake, and most importantly, easy to understand. They anchor us. They keep us humble. And I want them to stay long after quarantine ends.
As you can see, Harry Hill, the aforementioned Instagram influencer, has absolutely mastered the art of photo dump. But he wasn’t always a fan of the style.“I was actually anti-carousel messages at the start. That’s what we used to call them, ”Hill explained in a DM. “I thought they were lazy and unimaginative. Why not just choose the best photo so as not to waste our time? ”Much of his reluctance to embrace photo dumps was the word “dump,” which appears a disgusting number of times in this article. (Harry if you’re reading this, I’m sorry.) After a quick brainstorm, however, he found a much more appealing term for photo dumps: picture buffets.Since he threw out the word “dump,” Hill’s thoughts on the photo of – sorry, PICTURE BUFFETS – have changed.“Now that everyone’s film stock is always overflowing with photos and videos, we NEED picture buffets or we’d be buried under our own content,” he explained. “Picture buffets are utilitarian and cute. They look like new-age Facebook albums. After a party or event, we post the top 10 photos that capture the general mood. MAYBE a video or two if something happened that couldn’t be contained in a still photo… Ah, Instagram: the millennial scrapbook. “As we return to our solo post-quarantine social life, don’t forget to stay hungry for picture buffets.
