Kampala conversations: Why juggling Instagram accounts is the new normal
What you need to know:
- While trying to vote for a colleague's media award, my single Instagram account marked me as an oddity among peers who maintain multiple accounts for different purposes.
- My lunch companions explained their need for several accounts - from anonymously following old classmates to venting.
- Their revelations left me questioning my boring social media life, though secretly wondering if managing multiple digital identities is worth the effort.
Over lunch last Friday, in the bustling city of Kampala where I was attending an editors’ meeting, a colleague lit up the conversation with thrilling news—she’d been nominated for a prestigious media award. The catch? To win, she needed Instagram votes. The two other colleagues we were having lunch with had already voted for her, and as the energy buzzed around the table, I was eager to do my part. Wasting no time, I logged into Instagram, handed her my phone, and asked her to guide me. A few quick taps later, my vote was in. “Done!” I declared, beaming with pride, certain I’d done my bit to help her claim the win. Or so I thought.
“Thank you! But have you voted on all your accounts?” she asked.
“What do you mean by all my accounts?” I asked. I wondered if maybe she meant I could also vote for her through other social media platforms like Facebook, Tiktok or Snapchat. I was willing to do that.
At this point, one of the other colleagues who was quietly following the conversation as she enjoyed Uganda’s staple of matoke in the middle of vibrant Kampala, chipped in.
“I have several Instagram accounts, and I voted for her using all of them. That’s what she means,” she explained. My three colleagues looked genuinely dismayed when I confessed to having just one Instagram account. By now, I’ve made peace with being the odd one out in my generation — I can’t even manage to “get the basics right.”
Social media manager
In my defense, I feel like there are already so many social media platforms and it is a lot of work having more than one account on any one of them. The only exceptions (in my books) are if you are a social media manager, and you are taking care of other accounts which belong to other people or companies. The other exception, in my brain is in the case of business accounts. But no, that is not what they were talking about.
“No. all the accounts are mine, not business or for other people,” the second speaker clarified. I was curious to know why they needed more than one account on the same platform, and that was how I realised I live a very boring life.
One account is for stalking people, they said. This (stalking) cannot be done with an account that is openly associated with them.
“I have accounts that I use to follow people who I do not want to know that I follow them like former classmates,” one of the ladies explained. I struggled to understand why you would be following someone and not want them to know that they followed them. But they had an even stronger defense.
"Sometimes, you just want to vent on the page of a utility company, especially when you're pissed off. I can't do that with my regular Insta account, though. So, I’ve got one that lets me speak my mind, no holds barred," one person explained. Suddenly, it all clicked — no wonder I come across such brutally harsh comments on social media and think, how do these people summon such raw audacity?
Clear boundary
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a creative writing student, and I know all about creating personas. In journalism, it’s not so different from using a pen name — an alias that hides your true identity for a number of professionally sound reasons. Without getting into specifics, let’s just say I’ve published at least three articles under one myself.
The second reason my colleagues shared hit closer to home — it might just convince me to start a second Instagram account. As journalists with public-facing lives, they explained the challenge of maintaining a clear boundary between personal opinions and professional affiliations. What they post in a private capacity can easily be misconstrued as the stance of their media house. In today’s world, where the line between personal and public is a blur, having separate accounts feels more like a necessity than a choice.
Well, reflecting on this, I realised my own social media presence is far from vibrant — perhaps that’s why I’ve never felt the urge to juggle multiple accounts.
Do you have more than one account on the same social media platforms? What are your reasons?
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG, [email protected]
