Scientists around the world are already talking about the staggering numbers of psychological problems generated by social media in people.
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter are among them, teenagers millennials, generation X, and adult, in general, use social media to express their feelings, express political opinions, been pretentious and sometimes live someone else life.
This last one is the subject of the first feature film by Matt Spicer Ingrid Goes West. Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) is an unstable person who lost her mother and she is dealing with thought times for this. She later discovered after seen some pictures on Instagram that her Charlotte did no invite her to her wedding. Ingrid gets furious and goes to the reception and attack her with pepper spray. Ingrid apologizes for the attack, the audience discovered that she is just creating an illusion of friendship a Charlotte just because she made a comment on Ingrid Instagram feed.
A few days later a lawyer presents Ingrid her mothers will be telling her she inherit a big amount of money, at the same time Ingrid discovered on Instagram a social media influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) after Ingrid comment on one Taylor's picture, she receives a reply from her motivating Ingrid to travel to California to meet Taylor using all the money she inherits from her mom.
This was the perfect excuse to pretend to be someone else and living a so-called "luxury life" thru the eyes of Taylor on her Instagram feed. Ingrid develops a friendship with Taylor involving deeper into her personal life using everything she has to be the "best friend of her"
Matt Spicer explores one of the major deviations of people using social media, the obsession with social media personalities, who are just someone with a million followers. People pretend to live peoples life by looking at their pictures and believing in an alternate reality. The fact you showing yourself as a successful, happy, active person with allegedly meaningful content doesn't really mean that you are on that stage in your life. You see it every day. A travel photo can be the best illusion of all, you show it to the world and followers think you are there, no matter if the picture was taken a year ago. It's all smoke and mirrors.
That's the real danger of social media. Someone like your content but is just self-gratification and acceptance of what you expose to your followers and your feed. That's what makes you happy and complete, not your wife, your child, your family.
Aubrey Plaza doe an excellent job as a mentally unstable person who just needs to be loved by someone of millions of people in the cyberspace. The film is just a nice comedy with a strong message to modern society.