Of the two, Lara posts more. She has 18 photos on her account; Sofia has five. They put up lots more, but over time they delete them. In Sofia’s feed, she’s either alone or with a friend. Lara posts multiple images of herself with Sofia, where the twin effect is pronounced. I can’t help but wonder what it all signifies, and when I ask, they tell me “I don’t know” or else that it doesn’t mean anything.
Clearly both, however, know the rules. They’re bright. They get excellent grades and are wary—extremely dialed in. And while they’d never outright call them rules, they recognize guidelines that govern their social habits. For starters, as mentioned, both girls’ Instagram accounts are set to private. This is true of the great majority of high school kids. (...)
Then there is the rule about likes and comments. According to Lara and Sofia, when your friend posts a selfie on Instagram, there’s a tacit social obligation to like it, and depending on how close you are, you may need to comment. The safest option, especially on a friend’s selfie, is the emoji with the heart eyes. Or a simple “so cute” or “so pretty.” It’s too much work to do anything else. If there’s any deviation, “you have to interpret the comment,” Sofia says. “If it’s nice, you’re like, is this really nice or are you …” “... I don’t know,” finishes Lara. Is the comment sincere? Or slyly sarcastic? Formulaic responses breed zero confusion. Instagram is not a place for tone or irony.
The girls do use Facebook, but it’s their most public-facing social account and their most impersonal, relegated to dance-related posts from school and extracurricular updates like participation in charitable events. With their friends, they’re most active on Instagram and Snapchat. They don’t bother with Twitter, WeChat, Yik Yak, or Kik.
On any platform, however, oversharing is considered taboo. Or else “awkward.” Awkward is a ubiquitous teen word to denote socially unsanctioned behavior. It usually implies first- or secondhand embarrassment when you or a friend step outside the rules. Awkward doesn’t sound overtly judgmental or negative; it’s deliberately vague.
One example of awkward plays on Instagram: the “deep like.” This is where you lurk on someone’s account, going way back into the archives, and accidentally double-tap on an old picture. Many of us can relate to the horror of the deep like, the inadvertent signal that betrays your lack of indifference when you’re hate-following an ex’s ex at 3 am or crushing on someone you only peripherally know.
But for girls like Lara and Sofia, it’s just as cringe-inducing when you do this to a friend. Showing too much interest in anyone is mortifying. It lacks chill. “Maybe it’s a friend you haven’t seen in a while, and you’re like, ‘OK, what have you been up to?’ And then you like it—and then you unlike it, and that makes it worse,” Sofia says. They’ll get the notification that you liked it, and if your name is missing from their list of likes, they’ll know you tried to undo the damage. When you have tools with which to stalk everyone all the time, the most seemingly aloof person wins. (...)
“I'm a young finesser,” says Ahmad, 18, a senior at Hill Regional Career High School, a predominantly black and Latino public school in New Haven, Connecticut, with just under 700 students. Ahmad’s got a mustache and a hint of scruff on his chin, and he needs a haircut, though he insists it’s part of his strategy to look extra-amazing for prom, which is in two days. He’s the class clown who runs with the popular kids, despite proudly not participating in any extracurriculars. Still, he says, he may have peaked early: “I was the shit in middle school. I dated every girl.” The last week of senior year is hectic, and he’s looking forward to being done. For Ahmad, social media is all about talking to girls. Right now he’s juggling six separate correspondences.
His M.O. when he’s crushing on someone is to like a few Instagram pictures and see if she likes anything back. Ahmad, who has 965 followers and 16 posts, scrupulously edits his feed just like Lara and Sofia do. “If I’m not touching 40 likes, I’m probably going to delete it,” he says. The window to reach 40 is about two hours. Sometimes he’ll delete a post, save it, and put it up at a better time. Dead zone for likes is 9 am to 3 pm (before school works, but rushed mornings make for dicey like counts). Ahmad primarily posts selfies (guys can get away with this more easily than girls), and he’s most inclined to post when he’s particularly pleased with his outfit: a prom photo, just him in a dark suit, ultramarine shirt with matching pocket square, and sunglasses is a perfect example. A Flashback Friday photo of him as a middle school kid goofing with a friend is a post that will be deleted by the following Monday.
When he puts up what he feels to be a particularly strong post, he’ll hit up his friends via group text to tell them to like it. The appropriate comment for male friends to leave? “No hearts, no kiss faces, no wink faces, just the gas tank.” The gas tank emoji means “gang”—it indicates fealty, like #squad. “Gang-gang, it’s like your group. Not like ‘a gang.’ It’s not that serious.”
But back to the ladies. After a few mutual photo likes, the flirtation often escalates to emoji. If an emoji with the heart eyes gets another one in return, he says, you’re good. Other positive responses: an ellipsis thought-bubble to convey that she’s thinking about you; the bashful see-no-evil monkey. “‘Oh, thank you! I appreciate it’ is what I get from that emoji,” he says. Any of these responses means he’ll take it to DM (as in direct message). Other emoji are suboptimal. “The thinky face is like, ‘What are you doing commenting on my pictures?’” He says this isn’t a hard no, but it’s not great. The worst emoji—easily—is one you may not expect. “The smiley face,” says Ahmad with a pained expression. “Yeah, that’s the ‘Thank you, but I’m not interested.’”
For teens, ghosting (where you completely disappear and stop communicating, with zero announcement or explanation) is common and not considered particularly impolite. Ask Ahmad how many girls he routinely ghosts on and he’s unequivocal: “Tons,” he says. “Just boop, delete. If I’m not interested anymore, our conversations will get dry, like ‘Hey, what you doing? Nothing. You? Nothing.’ Boom, end of conversation.” He says it’s usually a mutual, conscious uncoupling. Interest begets interest: “If you start losing juice, they’ll start losing juice.” (...)
For now Ahmad will have to keep most of his flirtations digital. And one method of conversation that ensures no one loses juice is to flirt by way of a Snapchat streak. (...)
On Snapchat there are “lenses,” which are a little like Instagram filters but way more elaborate. There’s a bug-eyed one where you barf rainbows. One makes you look like a golden cheetah; another surgically augments you to be just slightly prettier. If you harbor the suspicion that you’d look better with rhinoplasty or a chin implant, this filter will confirm it. But the feature that sets Snapchat apart is that 24 hours after you post it to your story, it disappears. This significantly lessens the pressure for everyone. For kids who are taught about digital footprints from grade school on and are regaled with cautionary tales of exemplary students who lost scholarships or college entrance because of party pictures posted to Facebook, Snapchat is easy fun. Silly, even. A quality that all other social media apps apparently lack. There’s no editing, and the backdrops for the most part are pedestrian. “I’ll just send a picture of a shoe,” says one teen I talked with. “They’ll send their ceiling back, just to keep the streak going.” The point is that everyone’s Snapchats all kind of suck.
For a streak, you send a friend a direct snap. It’s got to be a picture or a video; texts don’t count. They have to respond within 24 hours with their own picture or video. After two consecutive days you get a flame emoji by your friend’s username. Continue the volley of private messaging and the flame emoji shows a number denoting the length of the streak. If you’re about to lose the streak from inactivity, a sand timer appears to add pressure. Ahmad currently has three streaks going.
“Streaks are a big deal,” says Sofia, though the twins don’t use them for romantic pursuits. “For someone you’re really close with, you can have a 50-day streak,” she says. “But someone you’re friends with but don’t hang out with every weekend—maybe you know each other from past schools—it’s a 10-day streak.”
All the teens agree that people rarely bother with each other’s “stories.” It all goes down in the DMs, because that’s where streaks happen. The teens I talk to have anywhere from two to 12 streaks going at the same time. They all say it feels a bit like a chore but that it’s the perfect level of communication with someone you might not feel close enough to for texting. Most of the dispatches are unflattering images of close-up faces that require about as much effort as an emoji but feel infinitely less generic. If texts are for pressing logistics, snaps are to let someone know you’re thinking of them but perhaps not that hard. It’s OK to send the same snap to a few friends, but it’s considered rude to send someone a snap privately that you’ve put on your story. “That’s the worst,” they all agree.
by Mary H.K. Choi, Wired | Read more:
Image: Ian Allen/Wired
[ed. See also: David Hume’s Guide to Social Media - emancipation by the cultivation of taste (Hedgehog Review).]
