help! i keep seeing my enemies on my feed!
ask steffi 04: advice for the social media age
As the digital realm continues to encompass the corporeal, we’re encountering new problems that no one seems to know the answer to. Not the overarching brushstrokes of policy and technology, but the nitty-gritty interpersonal issues that it brings us: the dance of flirting on Hinge, keeping tabs on our loved ones via Find My Friends, knowing the right time to Venmo request. Loneliness, love, money, fear, anger, yearning — now through the kaleidoscope of the infinite scroll.
This corner of it’s steffi aims to address life within the social media age, and offer a little advice about how to deal with our most online quandaries. Once a month, I’ll answer a question you have, and perhaps invite some other internet culture friends to share their thoughts, too. If you’d like to submit a question, you can submit through this form.
Dear Steffi,
Seeing the social media presence of my enemies consumes me with an overwhelming desire for vengeance that is neither rational nor practical. Sometimes this sense of wrath is cathartic and uplifting; other times I can tell it's slowly poisoning my body to give these people a single iota of brain space. Unfollowing these people doesn't do the trick alone — friends of friends post friends of friends of friends of friends and it's a jumpscare every time. Is the only solution to go offline? To work harder at opening my third eye? Help me.
— Alexa
Dearest Alexa,
I know exactly what you mean. The infrastructure of social media makes it so difficult to fully let go of one another. And you’re right—unfollowing doesn’t do anything, especially if you have an IRL connection, or your algorithms have detected existing activity between your phone and theirs. Being online and scrolling on your feeds means there’s a non-zero chance of encountering someone reposting your high school bully’s viral tweet, seeing your ex pop up on your Hinge profile, or stumbling across the new foodie TikTok account belonging to that one mutual friend who never Venmoed you back and has a really grating vibe. The impulse to click through when they appear on your screen is like checking under the newspaper to make sure the spider’s really dead. I don’t need to be doing good all the time, but you have to be doing worse than me.
Yeah, you could log off for a while and touch grass, and that would probably make you feel better. But I don’t care to indulge in fanciful, lofty tableaus of a life divorced from social media. That’s for pretentious losers who believe organic produce is actually pesticide free. You don’t receive accreditation granting you a high class of morality when you delete Instagram.
What you need is a reconfiguration of your relationship with social media. When it begins to feel too real and too all-encompassing, that’s when you need to remind yourself of what’s the point in you being online. The internet is a tool that can be curated a million different ways, so curate it! Maybe you just want to just mindlessly scroll through your feeds, so get a burner account attached to a totally different email. If you only want the social part, make a finsta so you only see the content from your close friends—the ones who you know aren’t posting your enemy. Perhaps it’s the overwhelming sensation of carrying all these emotions in your pocket. So limit your social media time to your desktop (I cleansed the Twitter app from my phone, and it’s been very nice). Try different apps! Instead of getting your news on Twitter or outfit inspo on Instagram, subscribe to Substacks or get on Pinterest, which is basically a vibes void.
It seems like a lot, but it is not. Social media is a tool that a lot of us have a long and winding footprint on, and we need to all be better about learning to take charge of our relationships with it, especially as it becomes more of a non-negotiable to be online in some way. Finstas and burners have become increasingly more common over the years, and I personally think it’s a really mature way to navigate the jungle of content. Many already understand that there is benefit to engineering a space that feels most productive for you, because there’s still much to be gleaned from it. I like watching videos from content creators sharing vlogs out of Gaza—I never would get such perspective from a Western news source. I like seeing what my middle school classmates are eating for lunch this week, even though I haven’t spoken to them in over a decade. I like looking up Shrek and Ronald McDonald fan fiction simply because how else would I discover such genius without an app like Wattpad?
Listen, sometimes, peace was never the goal. I love stewing in feeling wronged, and I won’t judge you for being a hater, too. It also makes sense that the rage is stoked every now and again if you have to keep seeing this person in real life and/or online against your will. But anger is such an exhausting emotion, and ultimately drains you more than the person it’s directed at. Kindly plant your feet on the ground and stand on business. Are you going to let one opp get the better of you?
Psst…guess what? This summer only, I’m bringing a twin it’s steffi advice column to Fast Company, where Deez Link’s Delia Cai and I will be answering your digital etiquette questions! These columns will run in tandem. I’m very excited about it—so if you want to proffer a question, leave a comment below. As always, submit to this advice column through my Google form.
More reading:
For The Guardian, I looked into the “Oxford study” comment flooding Asian women’s TikToks mocking them for dating white men—but it’s a fictional study.
My profile of Thủy, the first Vietnamese-American female artist to perform at Coachella, for Coveteur.
In Rolling Stone, my examination of how Illennium became a cornerstone of an Asian American subculture. This one was very divisive, lmao.
A big, gigantic, nostalgic feature I wrote for The Ringer on how 2014 changed the internet forever—the year of Gamergate, #BLM, affiliate marketing and a shift in the influencer economy.
My deep dive into Wonyoungism and the latest in eating disorder K-pop content for The Daily Beast.
For Bustle, I wrote about how the attention economy has paved the way for the fangirl economy.
I am not a mental health professional and the contents here are solely for entertainment and informational purposes. Please see a provider to seek diagnoses, treatments, and expert care.