InstaCrap

I seem to have fallen foul of yet another social media app. I am beginning to think it’s me and not them. This time its not facebook. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, had his baby girl and promised to give away 99% of his facebook shares to an initiative set up in her name, he has mellowed towards me.

Pre-natal he would have issued me a warning when I post items on my timeline he finds offensive, but now he overlooks my posts. I now have free rein to post what I like without fear of reprimand. Well so I thought until certain facebook friends – now demoted to acquaintances – took umbrage to certain posts on my timeline. Telling me what is right or wrong and whose privacy or human rights I might have violated by posting certain Grindr screenshots on my timeline. But I digress.

Instagram is the social media app I have now upset.

So get this. I have friend, who likes to post his every move on Instagram. He wakes up in the morning and takes a selfie after taking a shower, grooming his hair, applying make up and filters to the picture and posts it on Instagram with a caption claiming, “I woke up like this”

Then follows an update of him getting into a “Limo” (Uber taxi to you and I) that would be taking him to work that morning. At various points of the day his followers get updates – Like the amazing views of London from his amazing office. (Reality is that he works on the ground floor, but regularly goes upstairs to the 15^th floor to ogle some guy in the marketing department); the amazing food he supposedly had for lunch; A completely spontaneous selfie with his amazing work friends (who actually chat about him behind his back); His amazing workout at the gym; The amazing food and wine he had while out on a date with an amazing escort guy. Then to end the night he’d post a selfie with the amazing escort guy, reclining on the sofa in his flat shirtless (post – coitus I can only assume).

Being the competitive bone-head that I am (plus I was bored) I decided to have one up on him, by also updating my ten or so Instagram followers with my movements on a particular day, but with a twist. I would be real.

So I took a picture of myself in the mirror as soon as I got out of bed and updated Instagram. It was a morning when a certain part of my anatomy was more awake and alert than other parts of my body. I too captioned it “I woke up like this”

Instagram HQ promptly removed the picture. Something about gratuitous nudity was given as the reason and a warning promptly issued. (Haters)

With my ego suitably bruised, during the course of the day I continued to provide various picture and short 15 second video updates of my activities at different times of the day.

This comprised – A video short of myself running for the bus. (Not an easy feat I tell you); A selfie on the crowded bus with other passengers in the frame giving me evil stares (What is their problem?!?) during rush hour; A selfie with the Baristas at the Starbuck I visit every morning for the last 3 years and they still get my name wrong on the take away cup; Picture of me “busy” at work; A picture of the view from the window of my first floor office which faces another window of another building; Picture of my boring pre packed lunch of fish, sweet potato and broccoli; A picture of my colleagues pinching their nose at the smell of my lunch; A short video of my workout in the gym, essentially showing my bad form while doing squats; My post work out protein shake and my post work out meal of Ewa Agoyin from my favourite local Nigerian restaurant. Now this is where things started going wrong.

Let me tell you about Ewa Agoyin. This is beans boiled until it is very soft and mashy, then it is cooked with palm oil, chilli peppers and other spicy seasoning and sometimes dried fish. It is served with a spicy sauce. It is simply divine when served with very ripe fried plantain.

The thing is Ewa Agoyin – and I suspect the type of beans used in its preparation – has a purging effect on me within 2 hours of having the meal. The process starts with farting. They start off quietly at first, but as the minutes progress, they become more frequent, louder and pervasive. The smell could be mistaken for poison gas causing public spaces to be cleared out for  Health and Safety reasons as a precautionary measure. That is why I make sure I eat Ewa Agoyin, when I am alone in my house. I wouldn’t wish the farts on my worst enemy. Well maybe on some Instagram folk.

Then comes the blow out. It starts with stomach cramps which then leads to spending an hour or so, on the toilet emptying my innards out. It is as if the Ewa Agoyin gets inside me and liquidises every iota of food present in my stomach and its surroundings. It then expunges everything with the force of a high-pressure hosepipe attached to a fire engine trying to extinguish ferocious flames.

And don’t forget, it comes out the way it goes in – Hot on account of all the chillies. So when people compliment my derriere and say it is hot, I do know what they mean. I tend to spend about 30 mins afterwards soaking in a tepid bath just to cool the exit point down.

This happens to me each time I have Ewa Agoyin and I go through all this privately. However, in the spirit of being real, on this occasion I shared the process on Instagram.

My account was inexplicably shut down immediately after updating my followers with a video of what I can only describe as disaster zone. It showed what looked like steaming molten brown lava in my toilet……

These social media people have no chill at all.