Future Brands

Instagram is a wasteland.

Public Opinion

But where do brands go now?

There’s a particular kind of silence happening on Instagram right now. If you’re a brand posting organically on Instagram, you’ll know what I mean.
It’s not the peaceful kind of silence, but the eerie, post-apocalyptic kind.

Instagram is now a digital wasteland where even great content goes to die; posts that would’ve soared two years ago now land with all the grace of a dropped brick. Content crafted with precision, intention, and the same magic that once guaranteed lift. Now? It hits the feed like a ghost signal. No boost. No spark. Just tumbleweeds rolling over content that deserved a crowd.

Stare at your engagement (or lack thereof) long enough and you start to wonder:

Is anyone… actually still on here?
Are we performing theatre to an empty room?
Desperation sets in as brands begin wandering the platform with little bundles of content, hoping someone, somewhere, still sees us?

Instagram wasn’t always like this. It used to feel like the centre of culture. A living, breathing city where brands could build worlds, architect desire, and be rewarded for originality and, let’s face it, simply just showing up.
Now, it feels like trying to broadcast poetry from inside an airport food court. Loud. Chaotic. Everyone numb.

For me, the question isn’t “Is Instagram dead?” That part feels quite certain.
It’s “What does a brand do when the main stage goes dark?”

From where I stand, today’s brands are digital refugees; unable to remain on a platform that wrings them dry, forcing them to churn out content that adds nothing to their equity or their cultural weight. They can’t stay… but where exactly are they meant to go?

The Algorithm Ate the Audience

Let’s name the villain. Engagement isn’t low by accident, it’s structural.

Instagram didn’t just move the goalposts; it replaced the sport.
We trained for community, craft, narrative.
And then, with what felt like the click of a finger, it gave us roulette.

Brands are now competing with:

People’s group chats
AI-generated faces
Rage-bait commentary
Micro-celebrity therapists
The release of the Epstein files (or lack thereof)
Dancing cats with better retention rates than global skincare brands

How does a brand, any brand, cut through a feed optimised for chaos, virality, and emotional whiplash?

Are we meant to out-shock shock culture? Out-dance Reels? Out-spam creators who spend 14 hours a day reverse-engineering watch-time metrics?

And the deeper question:
Should we even try?

The Myth of “If You Post More, It Will Come”

We’ve entered the era of desperation posting.

Brands have become the corporate equivalent of a situationship sending “???” at 2am.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

No one ever scaled a cult brand by appeasing an algorithm.
The algorithm has no taste, no ethics, no vision.
It does not care about your brand story, your craftsmanship, your nuance, or your thousand-person waitlist.

So why do brands keep feeding it like it’s a god?

Could it be that we’ve confused distribution with meaning?
Frequency with resonance?
Attention with affection?

What if engagement wasn’t the KPI we think it is anymore?