Milo Anthony Ventimiglia is back on Instagram and you'd better believe he's playing by his own rules.
Die-hard fans may recall the This Is Us star quit Instagram in January 2013 after feeling like people were no longer paying attention to his photos. (We get it, Mi.) He shared a memorable final post captioned "Finito," and proceeded to go dark for years, but on Jan. 1, 2018, Milo kicked off the new year by vowing to gram again.
Naturally, I, a Ventimiglia stan, turned on post notifications to ensure I wouldn't miss any of this man's future content, but things got weird, fast.
The majority of Instagram users live by an unspoken rule that one must not post in excess. A single post a day? Acceptable if your life is super interesting. Two a day? Yikes, but okay once in a while. Three or more? Essentially unheard of, unless you're Beyoncé.
If you're in the mood to share dozens of photos, you make a Facebook album — everyone knows that. Instagram is a selective platform for your best photographs, so it makes sense that it should be used sparingly.
But does Milo give a shit?
Milo's Instagram takeover
On Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, Milo made good on his promise to gram by posting a photograph of his shoes in Los Angeles.
"Nice," I thought to myself, picturing Milo on a California sidewalk at that very moment, motorcycle helmet in-hand. But before I could hit the like button, the actor shared another snapshot of himself in New York. Wait, what?
Within seconds my phone was blowing up with Milo notifications as he went on to Instagram a photo of the American flag, one of his motorcycle feat. Apple Jacks, and some We The People art. Before I knew it Milo had shared 15 photos to the platform over the course of six minutes. The notifications would steadily arrive every 25 seconds or so, and I was in awe of what was happening.
Milo just Instagramed 15 pics in 6 mins and there is no end in sight I'm laughing so hard
— Nicole Gallucci (@nicolemichele5) January 10, 2018
More shots from New York, a flurry of photos from D.C., then Arizona, and back to California — Milo's shoes and motorcycle were making their way around the country right before my eyes.
But the real badass move? Not all of these photos were PROFESH. The actor was sharing photos of eaten food, part of a table, and even a "mistake," which was quite literally just a blurry picture of nothingness.
I had so many questions. Was Milo about to share every photo he'd taken during his Instagram hiatus? Did he have these photos and captions pre-written? Was anyone else in the world laughing uncontrollably while getting notified of his every move? Is this how teenage Jess Mariano would Instagram if he made an account to impress Rory?
After 18 minutes and 38 Instagrams later the madness stopped. Yes, you heard me... THIRTY EIGHT. Forget a single day, he shared 38 photos in less than 20 minutes. Who DOES that? I was exhausted from the emotional roller coaster Milo had taken me on, but assumed it was a one-time deal to mark his return back to the platform.
It wasn't.
A league of his own
On Jan. 17, the Ventimiglia take-over struck again with a less overwhelming blast of 11 posts. Then, on Feb. 10, he amped things up to 17 posts. Now I was intrigued.
Dying to know if this was normal Milo behavior or some elaborate, artistic cry for help, I set out on an investigation starting with the actor’s very first Instagram post — a filtered photo of a nicely made bed from Dec. 12, 2010.
On his first day as an Instagram user Milo posted twice. Ambitious. On his second day, twice. And I noticed nearly every day that followed his daily post count exceeded one. On Oct. 16, 2011 the man posted 13 photos and someone called him out for his excess sharing.
Image: screengrab/instagram
Once a badass, always a badass
This weird and completely unnecessary dive into Milo's Instagram history made one thing abundantly clear: Milo Ventimiglia does not care about your Instagram rules now, and he has never cared about your Instagram rules. It just wasn't apparent to me until I turned on notifications.
Would I love him to hit pause on the later-grams and share real-time Instagrams from his life once in a while? Sure. Is it mildly terrifying to see someone break the social media mold in such an ~extra~ way? Hell yeah. But there's no denying his bold Instagram strategy is far more exciting than playing it safe.
With that said, I feel like VERY FEW people can pull this off, so for the love of Milo let's not all bombard Instagram with 32 posts a day. If there's anything to learn from this it's that we should all care less about what other people think of us.
Milo's a rebel who refuses to live life by some unofficial rule that stifles his creativity, and for that I commend him. He wears his leather jackets well, he drives a motorcycle, and he grams when he wants to gram.
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