Alright so...you may or may not have noticed, but I took a forced vacation over this past weekend...
I got booted off of IG for a few days and I’m not entirely sure why…it sounds ridiculous...at first it was confusing...but my confusion quickly turned to anguish when I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
Long story short, I got booted for ‘violating IGs terms of service.’ I appealed and 24 hours later they sent me a canned email that said they made a mistake and I should be able to log back in. I logged back in, and within 30 seconds I had been booted again, but this time my account would be ‘permanently deleted.’ I had friends search - my account was gone. All the countless hours I’ve spent building up an incredible community - all gone.
For 4 days I searched far and wide for information on how to reach Instagram and came up with next to nothing. I reached out to FaceBook business support (as FB owns IG) and they told me the decision from IG was final and they couldn’t help me. I was a monster to my kids for a couple of days - I couldn’t pay any attention to them cuz my mind was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do. How could I possibly start over?
At that point, I went into brute force mode and hit up each and every ‘contact form’ for IG I could find. I hit them up on FB, on Twitter, in the DMs, on email, on LinkedIn, on Reddit, I even appealed to employees of FB and IG. I had my friends petition for me.
I received SEVEN emails from IG telling me they made a mistake, but my account was still gone and I couldn’t log in. I went ahead and deleted the app out of sheer frustration and hopelessness.
At the exact moment I decided I needed to build up my FaceBook page, one of my loyal followers sent me a message that showed up on my computer desktop alerts as coming through IG. He sent it through Instagram.
On my desktop - I quickly went to Instagram.com and tried to login. It worked. Then I re-downloaded the app to my phone and tried to login. It f*cking worked. My whole body lifted. Back. In. Business.
Moral of the story: I need to start building up my FB page, and I’d like y’all to come with me.