views and likes

I made five posts on Instagram today, updating my friends on:

1. Getting matching tattoos (for a first date)
2. Dying my hair
3. Buying my Acura
4. Three weeks in Iceland
5. Seven weeks in Costa Rica

On Instagram, you are able to see who has seen your story. The only way to see if someone has seen your post is if they liked your post. The difference between the two reveals the current status of your relationship with them.

I don’t use my main Instagram account regularly, so I don’t engage in content from my friends for the most part. It is how I preserve my mental health. If people were to check who has viewed their stories, they wouldn’t see me. I don’t engage with content by my friends. There is no contact. However, today, after I posted a story of my Spotify Wrapped this year, I noticed there are some people in my life who still view my content but choose not to engage with it. I find that to be a somewhat sad state of affairs. They see a bit of my life, and they are offered a window to engage with it, but they choose not to. It is especially sad considering how close to these people I was at one point in my life.

Sometimes, I think about my social isolation, both in the physical and virtual world. I choose not to engage in content that is not my own nor inspires me. This involves most of the people in my extended friend group (i.e. the people I follow and am followed by on Instagram). I do this to preserve my mental health because it hurts to know how someone is doing when they are no longer in your life.

I am a very up-or-out person. Either a friendship is progressing through intentional and fulfilling interactions, or it is not worth the upkeep. This is why social media seems strange to me. Interactions on social media are not intentional and not fulfilling. Yet, they take up time and headspace. This is why I no longer regularly consumer social media in the social sense. I still use Instagram and X as a content aggregator to keep up with some of my favorite tattoo artists and e/acc influencers, but I don’t follow any of my friends on social media. When I see my friends and ex-friends live vibrant lives without me, I am happy for them, but I still wished that I was a part of that.

I write about social media every now and then. It used to be a bigger deal for me in college. I used to care about how many likes I receive. I supposed I will once more when I get my MBA. I feel like the “social” part of social media has passed me after college ending. There aren’t really established social structures anymore, and social proofing is no longer as important as it once was. You meet people at face value, and who you know isn’t really as important. It is more adult. It has also been a bigger part of my personality to not care. Sometimes, like today, I like to flex by how much I don’t care by post five times in five minutes after a year-long hiatus. So I guess I still care to be perceived by how much I don’t care.

It’s my last night in Costa Rica, and I’m feeling quite emotional from my post on social media. I feel like I’ve been burying my feelings about a lot of my past relationships for a very long time, and it only resurfaces whenever I open social media. As opposed to a controlled demolition, one leak at a time, it all comes in at once because I have not drained it. My life is not inherently social, so the social part of social media can be overwhelming whenever I use it now. It is not a part of my life, but tonight it is, and it is a lot.

I feel like I have infinite creative output. Maybe this is what I have been missing since college. My social media usage was one of the larger lifestyle change between college, when I did have creative energy, to now, when I don’t.