I’m going to start this with the assumption that everyone has experienced a friend breakup at least once in their life. Perhaps it’s my firm boundaries, the fact that I’m a magnet for people with issues, or maybe I’m just toxic. For one reason or another, I have gone through quite a few friend breakups. Some of these breakups were more of a fizzle-out, or a seemingly small disagreement or hiccup that turned into days, then weeks, then months of mutual silence. Others were huge blowouts, angry arguments over text or in person. Some don’t even require any incident at all with the friends involved; I’m sure tons of folks can relate to losing friends in romantic relationship breakups’ unofficial custody battles.
I won’t sit all high and mighty on my hugely popular dozen-subscriber blog and pretend that I am always, or even sometimes in the right in all of my friend breakups. There have also been times where a friend reveals their true colors, i.e. outs themself as being racist or otherwise bigoted, in which case, I am not sorry and I stand by my decision to cut those people out of my life. Other than those cases, though, the circumstances around friend breakups can be complicated; whether or not we feel angry or wronged, we can often acknowledge there is no clear right and wrong person. We don’t always feel like the protagonist or the victim.
Navigating social media would be difficult enough in a world without constant discourse over ridiculous bullshit, popularity and beauty-based metrics competitions. My fellow chronically online people might relate to my discomfort finding a balance re: social media presence. While the era of everything genuine being “cringe” might be finally dying, my social anxiety battles my need for attention and I have to straddle the line between sincerity and nihilism. Tiptoeing through the digital minefield often leads to posting and deleting, overthinking every post and profile change.
When you go through a breakup, though, whether with a friend or a romantic partner, you enter a whole new arena of social media tightropes.
The temptation to online stalk
We’ve all been here: it’s bedtime and we’ve had a couple drinks, maybe a little bedtime weed gummy or two, and we get to scrolling. Something triggers a memory of the ex-friend(s), and suddenly it’s 1 am and we’ve scrolled through every one of their posts since the breakup. We’ve even gone through their new friends’ profiles, and then we find ourselves on their new best friend’s cousin’s boyfriend’s sister’s lash tech’s Linkedin page. Online stalking isn’t always malicious, it’s just a result of being a little nostalgic, and very nosy. We rationalize it: it’s not hurting anyone, they’ll never know (as long as I don’t accidentally like a post from 3 years ago), they hurt me so it’s okay to do a little stalking. The resentment, sadness, and curiosity sometimes get the best of us, but like I’ve been telling myself for the past several months in regards to smoking just one little American Spirit: don’t even think about it, girl. It’s just going to lead to a morning-after of regret and shame. It’s impossible to move on from and grow while you’re spending time and energy on someone you already decided wasn’t meant to be in your life.
I’m fully aware that it is insane to put a significant amount of time and emotional energy to dissect the intricacies of whether to take an ex-friend off of your close friends story, or block them on Twitter, or delete your pictures together. Of course it’s ridiculous, but so is social media itself. If I can call myself an expert in anything, it’s scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. As much as I want to quit it, I spend an unreasonable amount of time online, so of course I’m going to be thinking about stupid bullshit like this.
I’m assuming, however, that I could not be the first person to have this internal struggle. For this reason, I have compiled my personal rules for post-FBU social media use.
When to unfollow
Unfollowing a mutual or former friend makes me feel like a wannabe influencer. I feel like I’m saying “I don’t care about you, but you should definitely still be interested in what I have to say, right?”. If you care enough about your follower count that you’re unfollowing someone instead of ignoring, muting, blocking, or softblocking them, it’s time to log off for a while (and that’s coming from me!). If the person already unfollowed you, that’s one thing, but if you were once friends with someone, it’s probably best to just remove them from your social media sphere altogether.
When to mute
The mute button is a precious gift from god (or some tech nerd) to the chronic scroller. This button should be used in cases of a mild falling out or gradual loss of one-on-one contact with a friend who is a little annoying. I’m certain I am muted by several mutuals on Twitter, and this is for the best. When you’re not actually upset at someone, but don’t need to hear their every thought, the mute button is your answer.
When to softblock
Softblocking is a term that, to my knowledge, originated in the early days of stan Twitter. Essentially, it means blocking and then unblocking someone, although most social media sites now have features to remove followers without doing this. I fondly recall my experiences softblocking other stan accounts that didn’t have the exact same opinion of One Direction as me (or something stupid like that). More recently, I have been known to softblock for several circumstances. For example, post-actual breakup, when I lost the metaphorical custody battle of the mutual friend group, I was more than a little bitter. I didn’t softblock everyone, just the handful of former friends who I felt betrayed by but not necessarily angry at. When you don’t care to make a big deal over the FBU, or if you truly have grown further apart than a mute can handle, it’s time to softblock.
When to block
Not to backtrack on everything I’ve just said, but I think it’s okay to block someone under many circumstances. If the sight of someone’s name/username and profile picture makes you uncomfortable, or angry, or more sad than you can blame on nostalgia, it’s probably time to block them. While it might seem extreme, it also might be therapeutic in a way. My great pal Simone put some perspective on this for me, giving me some slightly-less-online advice. “It’s not that serious,” they said. “Social media is not the end-all-be-all of communication, so by blocking someone on social media, you’re not blocking them from contacting you socially.” If you’re not blocking someone on every social media site and their phone number, if the person has some other way to contact you, it maybe shouldn’t be such a big deal if someone blocks you. If you have been blocked, it might be that they absolutely hate you and hope the worst for you. Maybe they stay up at night concocting spells against you and your offspring, and they talk shit about you to anyone who will listen… but it’s a lot more likely that the FBU effected them in a way that makes seeing your name pop up on their phone makes them sad or irritated. But I have great news! If your mom didn’t tell you when you were getting bullied in high school, not everyone is going to like you, and that’s okay. (If I write that out 100 times on the chalkboard, I’ll start to believe it myself.)
If you hate them, if they fucked you over, if you think about whatever transpired between you and you feel like either crying or breaking something, it’s alright. I am giving you permission to hit the block button. It’s okay, even if it makes things awkward if and when you ever talk again, even if you still work together or have mutual friends, even if you still care about them a little bit, or when you simply know that relationship is done and you don’t want to be reminded of it.
Finding Balance Post-FBU
Maybe you’re really well adjusted and you don’t take social media that seriously (which, in that case, makes me question how you got this far into this post. I am so happy for you, what’s your secret? Hit my line.) Perhaps I’m far too social-media-brained (and not nearly qualified enough) to dissect the subtleties of actual, face to face interpersonal issues. I am, however, god’s favorite doomscroller and I spend 10 hours a day online, so I can say this: navigating social media is so unbelievably weird. I’m not going to hit you with the “connecting on social media is actually making us more distant” sentiment, but it is undeniably strange for us as humans to have to figure out which buttons to press on our little tiny computers when we are having interpersonal issues. Whether it’s internet friends, IRL friends, or some combination of the two, we are going to have disagreements with the people close to us. It’s more common than you think to struggle with how to operate after losing contact with someone, even if it’s not a romantic partner. If you can’t do, teach, as they say, so I’ll leave you with this: as we navigate the complicated and depressing landscape of social media, especially post-friend breakup, perhaps taking a step back from the screen is the key to peace in the midst of virtual chaos.
Thanks for reading this post. I’d love to hear feedback, or have someone grab me by the shoulders and shake me until I delete Instagram and Twitter from my phone. If you are over 18 and have 3 minutes to spare, please complete this survey for an upcoming post about growing up online in the late ‘00s & ‘10s, and keep an eye out for the post!
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