Social Media Faux Pas: Romance in a Digital Age

By Molly Richards (she/her)

Dating in the age of social media isn’t without its faux pas. No matter how meticulously you curate that ‘you up?’ message, there’s room for a royal fuck up. This week I’ve decided to shine a blaring spotlight on all of your (and regrettably, my own) social media blunders.

I think it’s natural to have a cheeky stalk through your beloved’s socials. I doubt I must warn you of all the possible ways this could go wrong, but I will.

I will begin with possibly the most traumatic faux pas. I’m sure you are familiar, and I’d say I’m sorry for bringing it up, but you chose to read this. You scroll through your crush or your ex or whoever’s profile, shamelessly looking through their posts. What could go wrong? I’ll tell you. You end up liking a photo from four years ago. What’s the logical protocol for this blunder? I can tell you my method, not sure about its legitimate level of effectiveness, but if it isn’t broken don’t fix it, right? I tend to default to protocol AHHshit-shitx5.0. It’s the tried and tested; unlike, lock the device, and lob it out the nearest window, but the wall works just fine. The key is to remove yourself from the experience and onsetting mortification as quickly as possible. Hiding from the phone helps as well. In all seriousness, I can’t offer you any actual help. I can, however, let you bask in the flames of my own glorious dumpster fire of mistakes. I know I seem so perfect sitting here writing this, but I too have made blunders like this one. Unfortunately, I made this error not all that long ago and I’m still not 100% okay. I lay awake some nights thinking about it. What’s worse is that this crush then went on to scroll through my posts and like the oldest. I don’t think this was a happy mistake, I took it as a brutal acknowledgement of my misstep. Things happen, let’s move on.

Time to face the music. Have you ever curated a story in hopes of your crush seeing it, and so spent upwards of five minutes selecting the perfect song aimed directly at said crush? No? … Neither. Don’t worry, I’m not one to judge. In hindsight, what was I thinking? Why must we execute a cryptic riddle in hopes of catching the attention of the unbeknownst suitor? I think we assume that our crush will watch our story, click the song, search its lyrics, decode our message of adoration, and ask us out. Or at the very least, hit that ‘flame’ emoji reaction. Tragic, keep dreaming, but fair play.

On the topic of social media stories, have you ever clicked up your crush’s story and been mortified by the time stamp? Great, I opened that 38secs after posting, I’m a stalker. Mortifying. Here you can apply damage control protocol AHH.5.1: exit the app, lock the phone, and throw it at the wall. What can you do though? How would you have known? Doesn’t matter does it? If you’re anything like me, you’re still feeling horrified.

Romance in the social media age must be one of the most devastating in the following regard. Say you meet someone and hit it off, you develop a crush and naturally do that little scroll. You’ve successfully dodged the minefield of mislikes and landed on a post that blows up in your face. Turns out your crush has a partner. Absolutely devastating. It’s no one’s fault and they look so happy together at the stupid beach but now what could have been is no more. There is a reason why they call it a crush I guess, you get crushed. Now if you’ve ever had a breakup, I think you may relate to this. Blocking exes? Perhaps a sign that a relationship that (contrary to popular belief) ended not so amicably. Let’s be friends? Or we could pretend like neither of us existed? It’s personal preference.

Making the first move in a social media age is also interesting. In other times, you could slip your crush a note or, I don’t know, smile in passing. Now you can drop hints subtly via social media. For example, if you’re not willing to completely put yourself out there, you could follow them. I find this frightening even so. It’s not that big of a deal, but waiting for them to follow you back is an emotional rollercoaster that I don’t enjoy riding.

Speaking of rollercoasters of emotion, active status?

Now this sent me through a loop, and this is why I have deactivated this setting. Like many of us, I’m sure you’ve had a time where you’ve checked to see when a person has been active to determine if they have or will just ignore your message. Sent 5 minutes ago, active 2 mins ago. Three minutes of dead air. Who said math wouldn’t help you in the real world? I can’t handle the stress, and I don’t always have the time to reply straight away so I turn it off. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Ever sent a message to the wrong person? Ding ding ding, we have a winner! I’m sure this is a commonplace incident and shouldn’t be that big of a deal. However, these rational thoughts go out the window when a distant acquaintance replies with a ha ha not sure that’s for me to a picture of you with spaghetti on your head. Not ideal. Or worse, I’ve heard that once a person was trying to get out of a date and sent this sensitive information to the date in question. I guess that settled that. Points for efficiency but not as many as you lost for the lacking technological finesse. I will leave you on a high note before I part. Now, not to contradict my earlier statement re: curating stories, but I once had a winner. A new flame had recently followed me, and I had decided to make the big move. Daring, right? Naturally, I had gone with the classic ask me a question poll, but to not be completely predictable, I requested a song suggestion. Then boom, this person offers up a (insert moody indie song here) and I was stunned. Not sure what I had expected, didn’t think I would get that far, and no countermoves were available. Eventually, I replied via DM, hey thanks I love this song! But if I’m honest, I never fully listened to it at the time. I did listen to the first ten seconds whilst my brain scrambled together all possible replies and came up with that piece of crap response. It didn’t matter though. Cut to the Will you go on a date with me? My brain short-circuited. I guess there still is some hope for romance in this digital age.