This past year “spam” accounts have become a mainstream way of letting people share their lives to a more controlled amount of people. These accounts are usually private, and they’re made for people who would like to post things they might not want everyone, such as potential colleges, to see. Spam accounts are also used by those who would like to post a lot of photos and not have to worry about it bothering their followers.

The intention behind these accounts was good. People would have two accounts, one for posting family-friendly things and the other would be for more personalized posts. Usually posts on these spam accounts would range from scenery pictures, selfies, blurry pictures, and even even the occasional black screen picture. Captions would usually describe how one’s day is going, or say something about the picture.

But it seems like the posts on these accounts have started to become too personal. People have started to use these accounts to rant and vent their problems. With spam accounts, interactions such as commenting is expected since the followers are closer to the account owner; interactions are usually short comments that relate with the post or react to it.

Usually people turn to venting as a way of getting something off their chest. It’s not a bad way to cope with something, and it helps people to get a clear mind and put things into perspective. What goes on with these spam accounts has morphed beyond venting. It seems as if people have morphed venting into ranting about how bad their lives are.

It’s understandable while people are doing this — it’s possibly making them feel better by clearing their chest. But the issue with this is the lack of resolve. Sure your life is terrible, sure you are having relationship problems, sure you don’t like someone, but how are you working toward fixing these problems?

The normalization of this behavior has put a block in the road of resolving issues. There’s nothing wrong with venting or ranting once in a while, but it’s become so normalized that people are just complaining about everything now, and not seeking a way to solve their problems. Usually people will add a response under these posts. These comments that sympathize with the poster or add to their complaints only do more harm than good.

It seems like people know that the way they’re coping is bad, but they continue to do it anyways because it’s considered normal. On March 13, the servers for Facebook had crashed, leaving Facebook and Facebook-owned apps down for the day.

People turned to Twitter to complain about Instagram, one of the apps where spam and private accounts are popular. Among these tweets, posts that joked about not being able to vent on their spam accounts and saying how frustrated they were got a lot of attention from many people apparently feeling the same way.

Twitter user @wensonhalie said “can instagram get its s*** together i’m trying to make a finsta post about how sh**** my life is.” Another Twitter user by the handle of @victoriaadowney said, “can instagram get back up so I can vent about my life on my finsta instead of being productive.” Other posts like this were all over and getting a lot of attention.

Obviously this type of coping is bad. Venting without seeking a resolution is not healthy nor should it be normalized. People need to take a step beyond understanding what they are doing is unhealthy and begin to work towards bettering themselves.