I love Instagram.

Like many, I get a certain thrill from a pretty aesthetic, the ability to share snippets of my life and discover the world through other people's feeds. I also love to take pictures and I won't lie in saying that often, they are strategically planned and take 30 to 40 shots before I get the one I like. And I know people will think "b*tch please" or "who has the time", but I don't see what's wrong with putting in a little effort to then post what I believe is the best depiction of my day or the event that I'm at, do you? Photographers take thousands of shots to get the one that they want to use, the one you see on a magazine or on a billboard, so what's wrong with anyone else doing the same thing? And today, I stumbled upon an article by Elle which echoed my thoughts exactly; that there is nothing wrong with wanting to care about your Instagram. At the end of the day, Instagram is a "highlights reel" of your life and not real life, and this is something you do need to remember. So, if you want to take numerous shots to put forward the best version of you for your personal feed? Absolutely, do it, girl. And so, I was living for the latest Instagram term to grab my attention. This term helps to describe that effortless try for the perfect pic and those often cringe "looking into the distance" poses we do as we try to be "candid". You know, the famous Kylie Jenner "I lost something" on the ground look, and the term is... a "plandid". A planned candid and I'm all for it. This term will help you to describe those shots which aren't actually candid but also don't feature you staring bullseye into the lens smiling because look, we don't always want to do that. These are those pictures where you plan deliberately to look away. And like described by Elle, "a plandid shaves off just a teeeeny bit of the narcissism involved in stunting for the 'gram and feels more natural". Now, we're not getting into the realm of photoshop and Facetune, because we'd be here all day, we're just simply saying there's nothing wrong with striking a plandid for the 'gram, if it's just that, a posed image and not a doctored one. Instagram is what it is and I never think it's going to actually depict real life, unfortunately, but if you want to use it to strike a pose and share some photography as it originally started out for, then absolutely, you do you, hun, this is what the platform is for. Plandid your day away.