I think you're wrong here. Different people use Instagram for different reasons. For some people, I'm sure there's the "hipster" aesthetic that you've described

I think you're wrong here. Different people use Instagram for different reasons. For some people, I'm sure there's the "hipster" aesthetic that you've described. For others, it's about the simplicity involved. My wife uses Instagram because it's the easiest camera on the iPhone to share with Facebook (tap, tap, describe, done). I could have set her up with Best Camera, Camera+, Camera Genius, or anything like that, but Instagram has the "easy" part down pat in a way that the others don't, even though the others aren't hard. I will use any of those (but have been using Instagram lately because of the ease), but I also have other choices I can make if I want to use more than the iPhone. I can shoot with my Canon 40D and edit the pictures on my iPad with some of the features that the blog post sneers at (in fact, I did exactly that in Italy last summer: http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com http://aureolastatua.tumblr.com). I can shoot with a Minolta XG9 that my parents gave me (I'm mostly through the two rolls of film that I bought for it), or I can even shoot with my mom's mom's camera: http://home.tiscali.nl/benbojo/kodak%20bullet%20open.jpg http://home.tiscali.nl/benbojo/kodak%20bullet%20open.jpg Instagram doesn't force you to put styles on the photos; you can just use it to upload the pictures you take. It gives you those styles because it can bring out the emotion behind the picture you took better. Fundamentally, I agree with the point of the blog post: there are features that I will never use in Tiffen's Photo fx Ultra, and I suspect that very few people will use them (is there a single photograph that I've taken that would be improved by putting the "Light (foliage)/Jungle Leaf" filter offered? no). I have, however, used a bunch of other filters in that and in Lightroom on the Mac that, yes, sometimes add grain or make the photos sepia. Not because I am aiming for a specific "look", but because I think the photo looks better with those filters applied. I bought Instagram for the same reason I bought Best Camera: it gave me a quick interface for taking pictures, doing quick edits, and uploading those pictures to where those who I know will be able to see them. That's it.