Cheating?

Okay so I am 99% sure that I'll take some flack for this post but it's something that's been on my mind and I'm just going to give my opinion, take it or leave it. I am in no way some great photographer, but I try, and if I learned anything from the classes I've taken, it's that to take a really great photo, one that looks impeccable from the second it gets opened for the first time on your computer (or gets developed) is challenging. We are spoiled in that technology now makes it easy for us to just make our photos look better and I can honestly say that I have used Photoshop to fix color elements, crop, rotate, etc. That being said, this whole trend of using Instagram and other similar photo tools online and on smart phones kind of annoys me. I feel like every photo posted on Twitter now has some kind of weird effect. Oh look, I can make my glass of beer look all cool by applying a vintage filter! This was probably a novel concept for the first month that the first one of these tools was available but now I'm kind of sick of it. I guess I should be glad because it's better than looking at terribly shot iPhone photos. Let the criticism ensue (and have a nice weekend!).