Why You Need Binoculars on IG Lately

Seeing a ton of skinny, billboard-style posts while you’re scrolling through Instagram lately? Yeah, us too. And we were confused. Don’t call us old – Kaitlyn, the one writing this, is literally 23 and had no idea what was going on when a stretched-out Laneige lip mask appeared on her feed. Meg thought it was a new feature Meta had released. But no, it’s something else entirely. 

So what’s the point of these thin reels? Basically, there isn’t one – except for the fact that they look silly. Someone discovered that when you post a super thin video to IG, it looks really weird on your feed. It’s not a new feature; it’s just something that got discovered and gained popularity. The only way to know this would happen was to try posting a skinny video and see what happened, which no one had really tried before. Because seriously, in what situation are you posting (or even making) a video that thin?!  

When looking into why these videos were getting posted to try to find some reasoning, we also noticed that brands are picking a very on-brand, normal sized cover image so that it doesn’t stand out or look weird in their grid. It’s only when you’re scrolling that you see the teeny tiny video, and most are static videos, so it basically just looks like a stretched-out picture. 

Now, we think this is just a silly social media trend that will likely pass very quickly, but we did notice some of the videos getting increased engagement compared to other recent posts from the brands’ accounts. Mostly, it seems like a way to interact with your audience in the comments section, just a bit of harmless fun. 

Hey, if it makes people smile or giggle, we think that’s great. We could all certainly use a bit more levity in our lives.

Example post by Parks Project, @parksproject on IG.