India, Oct. 19 -- There's a lot of dissing the 'Gram' (Instagram) these days. Let me, therefore, be contrarian and begin with a scandalous proposition: To truly know a person today, you must study their Instagram. The real diary of the 21st century is the curated feed. The very superficial nature of Instagram makes it the truest revelation of the subject. What we choose to display is not what we are, but what we want others to believe we are. And therein lies the deep secret of our desire.

To paraphrase Karl Marx (or perhaps Jacques Lacan, or maybe both because it doesn't matter here), ideology reveals itself in its very concealment. Can we then posit the following: Instagram, or another similar platform, is not the opposite of authentic...