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Instagram Is Now a Dating Platform, Too. Here’s How to Navigate It (The New York Times)
How to survive the wasteland that is post-breakup Instagram
Unfortunately, Instagram is not all romance and daisies. In some cases, rather than serving as a conduit for an attraction, Instagram is a reminder of what is gone.
When Mr. Forgione began dating his current flame, his ex-boyfriend started paying a lot of attention to his Stories and his feed. “The level of him creeping on me was out of control, to the point that he texted asking me, ‘Who is your new boyfriend?’” he said. “The guy I’m seeing has posted things about me and just from him doing that and tagging me, I’ve seen on my Stories guys who follow him looking at my stuff,” he said. “People are creeping on him and then creeping on me.”
Not that Mr. Forgione is above checking up on his exes. “After an ex and I broke up, of course I was crazy stalking him,” he said. But, he added, “I didn’t want him to see that I was looking at his videos.” So he used a co-worker’s fake Instagram account to see what his ex was up to.
And he is not alone. “I add a guy on my fake account even before we break up,” Mr. Yau said. “As soon as I know things are going south, I’ll add him. I have a fake account that all my exes are on. And I have two exes watching my Stories on their fake accounts.” Why look? “I delete them [from my main account] to make a statement: ‘I don’t want to keep up with your life anymore,’” Mr. Yau said. “But I believe that knowledge is power,” Mr. Yau said. “Even if it makes me feel crappy, I still want to know.”
“The only person you want to be in that much pain with when you’re breaking up is the person you’re breaking up with, so maybe there’s some impetus to look at their page to gauge how they’re doing and look for some sign that they’re also feeling bad,” said Leora Trub, an assistant professor of psychology at Pace University and a clinical psychologist.
Michel Kobbi, 27, a marketing manager from Montreal, offered a more positive take. “Seeing the new life in pictures helps bring a certain closure,” Mr. Kobbi said. “Then I know I’m totally fine with the relationship ending and I think it ends with another layer of healthiness to it. It’s really turning the page for both people.”
Other social media platforms have had similar effects, but Instagram is massive (just Stories has nearly twice as many users as Snapchat does), and other pervasive platforms, such as Facebook, are not as dominated by daily, visual updates. Nor, frankly, are they considered as cool as Instagram. “I obviously have Facebook, but I rarely, rarely use it,” Mr. Forgione said. “Your grandmother’s on it.”
As with real-life breakups, each person will have a unique experience. “How we interpret it is totally idiosyncratic,” Mr. Keller said. “It could be, ‘They’re having such a great time’ or ‘They must be really compensating for how sad they are.’”
“People are giving themselves just enough information to come to conclusions about how that person doing that have more to do with how they’re perceiving how that person is doing rather than how they’re actually doing,” Ms. Trub said.
And therein lies the final lesson: Instagram is a window, but also a facade. “The truth is you can’t look at someone’s Instagram account and know how they’re feeling,” Ms. Trub said.
Read the full article.
