is my soft launch annoying?
ask steffi 02: 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,
Are soft launches ever not annoying? Is there a technique for soft launching?
— J
Dearest J,
We are in the heat of short king spring, which can only mean one thing: those new relationships, forged in the wintery privacy of cuffing season, are beginning to poke their way from the ground and onto our social media feeds. For those heterosexuals in their late twenties and/or from middle America, it means the start of a voracious wedding season, where new boyfriends will finally make their way onto the backends of Instagram carousel posts, wearing the same blue suit and whatever pastel dress shirt they own, at last deemed presentable enough to show the world. For those living in Bushwick, it will mean an artistically disguised mirror selfie in a club or museum, before the relationship finally crumbles under the heat of June. Transitional seasons are soft launch seasons. That is the one truth we know about social media.
I’ve written a lot about the way we brand our romantic relationships online — how the single-dominant hookup culture of the 2010s became uncool during the COVID era, how the thirst trap has since become about intimacy more so than physicality, and how influencers profit heavily off of getting married. As the cycles of our relationships are documented wholly online, the art of the soft launch (the marketing strategy implemented by users before debuting a new relationship on social media) has expanded tenfold. We have become attuned to seeing a neck-down photo of a person at a restaurant or the glimpse of an elbow in a sidewalk selfie and understand that there is something to be deciphered here. It creates that curiosity gap that marketers desire, encouraging the viewer to stop in there scroll and wonder to themselves, who’s this new character?
As soft launching has become a more accepted behavior online, there is of course a counterargument that arises around if it is appropriate. Some come from the hand-wringers, worrying about if it’s okay to view personal relationships as marketing strategies. Others make fun of regular users for posting as though they are megawatt celebrities. A revisionist history of skipping the soft launch altogether and going straight for the hard launch has arisen in recent years (in feed post, full face, single photo or first photo in the carousel — or, if the poster is benevolent, a carousel full of photos, so that we may analyze this new partner from all angles).
“Instead of doing a soft launch or a hard launch, I actually think the right thing to do is if you don’t even be in the photo. Just get him in front of a plain wall, and I just want to see front-on, side, back, and side,” TikTok user Alice Brine says.
Of course, as this waffles on, it makes people more self-conscious about if they’re doing the right thing or not. If they’re being annoying or not. If they’re being amoral or not. All of this is nonsense. We need more soft launching, if anything.
The whole point of posting on social media is for consumption. If you are still on the train saying that you’re posting just to “connect with people,” you are a liar and possibly a kleptomaniac. You cannot scroll down a single feed nowadays without being force-fed a mountain of ads and sponsored influencer posts. I barely can differentiate between my friends’ posts and a content creator’s anymore. The world of social media is fracturing into those two separate words — social, one one end, media on the other — with little in between. Feeds are either primed for branded content (TikTok, Instagram Reels) or they are solely for your private group of friends (Close Friends, Lapse, BeReal). But the magic of these platforms comes when you can witness something truly special at the bridge of these worlds. We need more in-between. The fun comes from seeing two people from college fight with each other over Instagram Stories, read the comment thread of a guy you went to high school with getting absolutely clobbered by his grandma on Facebook, follow the marriage announcement of someone you’ve never met on Twitter.
You might wonder if this is “good” for you. You might be calling me a greedy, nosy, grimy little troll hiding under a bridge, looking for drama. You are correct, but you are also very boring. Much of the debate unpacking the morality of social media posting is inherently boring, because it conflates the act of posting as malicious already. The issues of social media have existed long before the tool: misogyny, tech billionaires, exploitation of people for content, judgmental people. None of that is a social media problem. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to share your life in a fun, silly way. It’s about boundaries, like any other thing. If you find the internet tiring and overwhelming, log off. If you don’t like your side of the internet, find another one. If you find soft launches annoying, take up knitting or something.
That’s the technique for soft launching: stop posting in fear of what people might say. I, for one, greatly enjoy seeing your soft launches. I am excited that you are excited, and I cannot wait for the day you are ready to show us this person’s entire face (if I don’t find them first). I like seeing the bouquet of flowers they bought you with just a sliver of their fingers. I like seeing your matching paint and pour creations. I like seeing the backs of their heads in a botanical garden. It’s wonderful and adorable and deeply entertaining for me as a person who is nosy and also appreciates a good photo. Don’t worry too much. If they don’t make it to the hard launch stage, I won’t mind. I’ll just wait for the next launch.
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.