your social media habits sound like an abusive relationship
Most people in my life still use big social media platforms. My wife, for example, is on Tumblr.
As someone who has been off of these platforms for quite a while, some of the things people share with me sound extremely odd to me; weird rules and behaviors they feel the need to abide by or else!.... Whatever that may be. Some I even recognize from back when I used them, but now I have a completely different view of them as I am no longer embedded in a culture that normalizes them.
For one, apparently some people are scared of unfollowing others. "I can't unfollow them! We already follow each other for years and they'd notice and then it's awkward!" so they'd rather stick it out with someone they no longer like or whose posts they don't wanna see. They'd rather filter out all posts via keywords and other means than just unfollow.
Internet strangers! Not even people in real life they'd run into. Why do you feel the need to lie so much just to protect a random person's feelings about having one less follower? The whole concept of being trapped with someone because you're "mutuals" is insane! Why do you care whether only one side follows the other? What does it matter? Why do you fuel the notion that unfollowing means downgrading a friendship or rejecting someone completely? It shouldn't be this way and you voluntarily participate in this.
Same with blocking. "I can't block. That is so harsh. I can instead just block them and unblock them again so we are both unfollowed from each other. This is called softblocking." Okay? And what for? So you can pretend it was totally a website glitch that made you guys unfollow each other? As if they wouldn't notice and know. Everyone knows what softblocking is on those platforms! Don't kid yourself.
When they refollow you again, what then? What if they message you and ask why you unfollowed, the dreadful thing you fear? Many then go on to lie, saying it must have totally been an accident, and follow them again?? Guys, it's a website, pixels on a screen - you can be honest. They're not gonna stick a hand through your screen to strangle you? Thanks to digital mediums, it has never been easier to just ride out awkward shit and ignore things. Make use of it. Pressing a button is not being aggressive or dramatic.
"*No, I cannot message them directly, that is awkward, we have never interacted before!" ... so? Damn, the website/app offers DMs and now you can't even privately message strangers on the internet anymore? What has this place come to? Now you're just there to scroll and passively consume ads and no longer talk to the people that share the ads around voluntarily? DMing someone is "intimate"? You are "harassing" someone with a simple message they can choose to open or ignore? Do you hear yourself?
Then there is the far more subtle or platform-specific stuff... like the fact that people feel like they can't comment in the replies until others have done so, or cannot reblog something because the post is still "too small"; that liking old posts is "creepy"; watching or not watching a story, liking or not liking a post has deep consequences; you have to put things in the tags instead of the post body to be safe of OPs wrath and signal that this is for your followers only (just for OP to screenshot the tags anyway and rake you over the coals).
There's also people that are too scared to challenge others directly and openly on the respective post, and instead screenshot it, put a water filter over it to visually signify they disagree with its content, and then post it themselves? The type of stuff they are comfortable to say when they think OP won't notice, while being too scared to do it underneath the post, and just living off of follower validation like "Look how dumb this is! Hype me up, like this post, comment that you agree!" is so embarrassing to see.
As people on there are treating public interactions as definitive signs and ownership, when someone bad follows you and likes your posts, while you don't even follow back, you're still treated as attracting and tolerating the bad person, therefore implicitly agreeing to their vile views. I guess that's where the whole culture of "Do Not Interact" disclaimers comes from, because you have to prove from the get-go where your alliances are and as a precaution for when you haven't deeply vetted every follower you have. In the same vein, people seem to proactively confess old opinions, archive tweets, lock accounts, or add disclaimers to avoid or soften hypothetical future attacks.
It all adds up to weird stories... I can't even completely recall it, investigative, roundabout stuff with second accounts and softblocking and other checks, weaponizing features of the platform, circumventing things, completely normalized mutual surveillance disguised as casual browsing, where they manually actively check who viewed stories, who liked posts, posting times, and other activity to judge the friendship level?
All of this is tip-toeing around, scared to offend someone, worried about nebulous consequences and being subject to toxic rage; never getting out of the awful behaviors you're subjected to by your peers in high school. It's as if you're in an abusive relationship with the platform and its users, and it's uncomfortable to see from the outside how scared it makes you to actually interact with anyone online or use the space for what it is made for. It's like your online home constantly has signs of a punch hole in drywall.
I see it with my wife as well, who also has a blog on here and sometimes would like to reply to some other blog posts on Bearblog, but never ends up doing it because "It's weird to barely post and then immediately shit on someone else's post." and other convoluted reasons that only exist because social media culture is what it is.
If you relate to anything in this post, you have been conditioned by people who can only scream and shout and "I am not reading all that" and siccing their followers on you. How sad! You're like a beaten puppy and your behaviors are completely warped.
It's actively harmful for you, and I wouldn't be surprised if it significantly fuels the social anxiety you feel even when offline. In the online spaces you're in, you are always asked to put the needs of someone else above yours that you cannot even fully anticipate because they're a nebulous mob entity. Your nervous system constantly deals with the risk of using this app or site blowing up in your face, and you're always scared when you see a bunch of notifications coming up. I don't know how you can feel mentally well when this is always looming over your head.
Spending my online time in places where none of this weird stuff exists has really put it into perspective. I can just reply! I can just send emails or reach out otherwise! No stress, no worries! No followers, no blocking!
Again, I know why all these exist in theory, and many I've known from my own time on these platforms, but none of it is justified - period. You don't have to tell me why any of these are valid or why they happen; this is like listening to an abuse victim justify the abuse. Sometimes you can only see how badly you've been treated months or years after you leave.
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