I fucked around with Instagram the other day to add another account to my profile (or profile to my account?) for the Travelall, figuring I’d build up some followers there and see if I could funnel traffic to the YouTube channel. I’m experimenting with how all this stuff works based on things I’ve learned at work, and if I can keep making $20/mo. on T-shirts, I can at least pay for my hosting bills. I made the account and posted two pictures, both shots of the truck I don’t think I’ve shared on my regular channel before.

Anyway, I got a notice this evening that the new profile was deactivated. What? But I could reactivate it by logging an appeal. So I followed their steps: I entered their CAPTCHA code correctly. They asked for my email address, and they sent me a code; then they wanted my phone number—and the system broke. It didn’t recognize/didn’t like my cell number for some reason. The help pages are less than helpful and basically just point back to the app and tell you to verify through that, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to see if I can get it to work then. In the meantime, I changed my Meta/Instagram password, figuring someone may have tried to brute-force into my account for some reason; hopefully that doesn’t break their system further.