In the dark ages of doom scrolling and rectangle-shaped Instagram posts, it can be hard to separate our real lives from our online personas – and even harder to understand the intersection of both of those ideas. For some, the internet serves as nothing more than an escape, and for others, that escape may be more fruitful than their own lives. Whether it be the constant comparisons or impulse stalking of people we know hardly anything about, it’s safe to say that our online lives have built a shaky bridge into our real-world expectations.Â
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine reached out to me, concerned. Her boyfriend had been liking other girls’ instagram posts – specifically snatched influencers with scarily symmetrical faces – and she didn’t know how to feel. On one hand he’d never acted in any way to make her suspect that he’d ever undermine her trust, and it was just online. How relevant are someone’s cyber interactions – and how much do they correlate to their physical, authentic self? Eventually, she confronted him, to which he responded saying that he likes everything out of habit and it’s “really not that deep”, but reassured her that he would never do it to someone she would care about. Here’s what I don’t understand – it’s so effortless to double tap a photo of some random influencer, then why do people also go through the effort of not double tapping when it comes to someone they dislike? If likes are meaningless, if they’re just muscle memory, then why do they hold so much weight when they’re missing? Social media thrives on this quiet tension. We act like it’s all casual, yet we’ve internalized a hidden set of rules — who gets a like, who doesn’t, who we watch but never follow, who we support in silence, and who we broadcast. Every double-tap, every story view, every ignored message, whether we admit it or not, plays into this unwritten social currency — a way to say, “I see you”, “I approve”, or sometimes even, “I want you to see that I see you”. We act like social media is detached from reality, that our online actions exist in some kind of vacuum, but the truth is, we’re all hyper-aware of what we engage with. We know when we’re posting for attention, when we’re curating a version of ourselves that doesn’t quite match up with who we really are. We know when a like is intentional and when a lack of one is too. And yet, we tell ourselves — and each other — that it doesn’t matter. It’s always “it’s just an app” or “it’s just a habit”.
But if that were really the case, then why does it sting when someone we care about stops engaging with our posts? Why does it feel validating when someone we admire does? If it’s all so insignificant, why do people monitor who’s watching their stories, or who liked their post the fastest? The like button isn’t just about appreciation anymore — it’s about presence. It’s about signaling who we prioritize, who we acknowledge, and who we don’t. So maybe the real question isn’t whether likes mean something — it’s whether we’re willing to admit that they do.