Three multiracial young women enjoying coffee together in a cafe sitting looking at something on a shared mobile phone with a smile
When you post photos on social media, you may claim you’re not doing it for the ‘gram but we all expect some sort of affirmation of our flyness from our followers when we do. This is also known as getting likes and if don’t like enough of your people’s photos you may soon find yourself disliked and unfollowed.
I knew social media lurking was a thing in the realm of enemy territory. You know, people who don’t really like you scrolling to see what your Internet life is about just so they can dislike you even more — and vice versa (tell the truth about yourself and shame the devil). But I didn’t know there were people who felt a way about real life friends and followers not liking their photos. That’s probably because I didn’t know people had enough time on their hands to truly pay attention to loyal double tappers verses lurkers.
But lo and behold, I’ve come across many a status criticizing people who don’t like posts about their accomplishments, or coming for people who mention things they’ve posted in person but didn’t like in the virtual world. I’ve even been confronted in person about my lack of liking which I chalked up to the fact that I post stuff on IG and dip out for the most part, unless I’m making a concerted effort to support friends and other people who are trying to do something with their social media platforms other than fill a void of feeling inadequate.
To be perfectly honest, I’ve never really thought about who wasn’t liking my pictures; I’ve always been more surprised and felt my supported by those who do. Sometimes I find people I didn’t even know were “lurking,” I suppose, are paying attention and that feels good. But in reality, I have almost 1,700 IG followers and have never gotten more than 200 likes on a photo that wasn’t with a celebrity on a red carpet. I have more lurkers than loyal followers, pretty much like everyone else who uses these platforms.
So that’s why I don’t feel a way about not having 1,700 likes on every picture I post. I also know everyone is not going to like everything that I post. The beauty of these social platforms is you can like what you actually like and scroll on past what you don’t. I don’t care if you lurk instead of like, the very fact that effort is put into watching what I’m doing says I’m doing something right and I don’t feel any type of way about friends and followers who genuinely don’t have time to big-up my selfies every other day, i.e. don’t live on social media. When I need their support in the real world I know they’ll be there. That’s if they haven’t cut me off for not supporting their social media status enough.
Do you have an issue with people lurking on your social media pages rather than liking posts?
