Media criticizing Instagram’s new look is a travesty. Can they shut up? Please?

This article is a parody of this.

Instagram unveiled a new logo Wednesday, and a member of the media is calling it “one of the biggest design fails of the year.”

The brand’s famous skeuomorphic icon, a virtual representation of a physical camera, was beloved almost universally, and is one of the most instantly recognizable logos in tech.

For some inexplicable reason, the media went hysterical over this, as if the sky was falling, or Trump had won the presidency.

“It’s a very forgettable image that will get lost on people’s phones amid the thousands of other similarly uninspired designs of most tech apps,” writes Adweek’s Tim Nudd.

The word “will” is telling. It seems to indicate arrogance, as if the writer has a crystal ball into the minds of phone users, which he clearly doesn’t. In fact, Instagram likely knows more about its users than Tim does.

If only he had paused to consider that Instagram can damn well do whatever it wants with its logo. If only he had considered that this is inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. Uber’s logo “travesty”? Long forgotten.

As often happens with logo redesigns by big brands, the media stands ready to criticize it. Throwing tomatoes at the door of a big corporation garners plenty of attention.

The media’s beat downs of every major logo change have proven to be largely forgettable.

Granted, the media survives on clicks. It needs to take advantage of controversy. It’s fundamental to our business model.

The question then becomes, how far do we go? Shout too much, we lose readers and credibility. Play it too safe, we bore our readers.

In the end, it’s about making sure that our content adds value in some way and that we stop chasing the obvious beats and go after the novel.

Unfortunately, the media’s beat downs of every major logo change have proven to be largely forgettable. Attempts to breathe significance into them come across as desperate.