With Instagram launching for Android, the popular photo-sharing app will now be flooded with photos from regular people.

When Instagram was exclusively on iOS, it was the privileged domain of artists only. It’s stream showed non-stop inspirational images that stirred our collective soul. We got a window into modern life. We got careful studies of clouds against stunning rainbow gradient sunsets.

There is no telling what kind of images mere commoners will upload. There is effectively no quality control now that non-artists have been granted access to the revolutionary app.

Were Steve Jobs still with us, I’m certain he would have taken measures to keep Instagram an iPhone exclusive. He understood the particular madness and sensitivities of the artist.

Instagram is not just an application, it is a community. It was a community. And every community comes with its own set of standards. Its own tastes.

Now, sadly, it has been relegated to a mere service. It’s like a calculator now. The Instagram developers have sold out and in the process exposed their taste, or lack thereof. Android users don’t try to capture their images with any degree of artistry. They capture their images factually. Robotically, just like the tiny green robot that symbolizes their brand.

‘Here is what I am eating.’

‘Here is what I am looking at.’

‘This is my place of work.’

Efficient. Sterile. Without personality.

Instagram was once a haven a wit, inside jokes and lessons in cinematography. Instagram, when it was on iOS exclusively, was a posh mobile art gallery. It was a virtual gallery that fit in our pockets and we were free to contribute to its walls when the muse descended upon us.

Now Instagram will turn into Facebook. Mark my words. The magic is over. It will become a factual stream filled with literal, soulless images, simply taken with little thought, simply to pass time. Images not captured to inspire or move.

Instagram just had one million users join in the past 24 hours that will turn the tides and tendencies of this once proud community into a stream of visual status updates.

It will become TwitPic 2.0/ It will be a pure visual Timeline.

It’s fine for a service like that to exist. In fact many do. It’s just said to see a once proud artist colony like Instagram open the floodgates to the wider internet.

Cue the cat photos. Ready the memes.

It’s only been 24 hours, but my soul has already been crushed by the army of one million Androids. I already pine for the once walled garden of the iOS only Instagram.