he hasn't replied in 3 hours, so he must hate me
digitally-induced overthinking & the ease of internet stalking
in a time when anyone’s online presence is so accessible through a singular google search, it’s easy to form assumptions and build up phantom identities in your head about who someone is.
as a college student, i find myself constantly being revolved by a plethora of different social circles and different spaces where the new faces are just endless. i can’t even count how many times i’ve searched up someone i don’t know on social media or linkedin (the usual two defaults) with the goal of learning something about them—in fact, it’s almost second nature now to hear an unfamiliar name, pull up instagram, type in the search bar, and do the customary scroll through their profile to glean a bit of insight into who the heck they are.
that routine repeated itself numerous times just this past week alone: i searched up the names of my newly-assigned random roommates on linkedin and instagram, the name of my friend’s opp from school (who i don’t even know) on linkedin, the names of some classmates i was told would be joining a club i’m in on instagram, the name of a guy i thought was cute on practically every single platform i could think of, etc.
we as humans are naturally curious, of course. access to the modern world wide web is mostly a wonderful thing that satiates our curiosity and hunger with its infinite access to learning and resources, but that can be a dangerous blackhole as well and is why it’s so easy to fall into the habit of doomscrolling into the never-ending internet.
when i actually stop to think about it, the internet’s a scary place because it’s really quite terrifying how accessible vulnerable information is and how easy it is to dig up the past of someone i don’t even know through a quick google search. that’s obviously why the importance of the digital footprint is so emphasized: i know that if i really wanted to (and don’t underestimate the stalking power of girls!), i could undoubtedly find the facebook profile of the mom of a guy i think is cute at the moment or the vsco of a friend’s crush’s ex—or something like that—with just a few clicks of my finger.
it’s also a two-way street. i sometimes wonder to myself what people who come across my internet accounts think of me—what judgement they build off of my instagram page or my tiktoks or my spotify playlists, or what assumptions they create about my book taste from my goodreads or my style from my pinterest or my intellectual ability from my linkedin (or even what thoughts are formed from coming across my substack!). i know that it’s inevitable that people who don’t know me [well] will construct a type of image in their head about me based solely off of what they’ve seen of me online, just as i oftentimes do them. besides, we all know that the internet (social media especially) is performative, yet its ease of access makes it oftentimes the only source of information we can get on people we’re even slightly curious about—so it’s hard to not give in anyway.
i’ve realized that it’s also very easy to overthink when all you have to craft your impression of how someone is like is their online persona. aside from just silent social media stalking, this is also a very prevalent phenomenon even when actually interacting with someone online. i’m sure you’ve been in a texting situation at least once in your life where you were unable to read the tone of the other person and found yourself overthinking their texts—if them using that period at the end meant anything, or if it’s ok really meant they’re ok, or if the text they just sent was meant to be so short.
with such digital interactions, we only have so much we get to see of the other person. there’s no full exposure to tone/body language/facial expression as we’d have with in-person conversations, so we default to overanalyzing the smallest things—emojis used, response times, and such.
this essay actually came to be because i’ve been texting with someone who i haven’t ever spoken to in real life before, and i realized a few days ago that i was making so many assumptions about this guy solely based off of the persona he emits over social media and messages. i was overanalyzing his style of texting and the emojis he used, and i literally crashed out over one long response time. this analysis gave way for so many initial assumptions to pop into my head: he responds slow, so maybe he’s not interested and he hates me and he’s a red flag or he doesn’t know how to talk to girls or blah blah blah blah.
in reality, i was reading way too much into something as trivial and inconclusive as texting style without taking into account external possibilities for those previously listed factors. he’s working a 9-5! how should i jump to the conclusion that he’s not interested when he could very well just be extremely busy at his full-time job? when i anchor myself back into real life and put myself across to the opposite side of the screen, i think as well: if someone was trying to communicate over text with me, and i’m texting sporadically throughout the workday, it’s probably because i’m just busy at work!
that’s just one personal example of how digitally-induced overthinking comes to play in my life. it’s strange because i feel like i know many personable and great people in my life who emit very different energies online—through text interactions or maybe just how their social media profiles visually look—versus how they authentically are face-to-face in-person. a person’s digital persona is by no means fully indicative or reflective of who they are in real life, and i definitely sometimes forget that.
that’s why i think we should all err on the side of caution when faced with all of these easily-accessible pipelines to people online. while we do live in a generation where technology and the internet are so profoundly anchored to our everyday lives, it’s important for me at least make sure that i don’t get too lost into that digital sphere or put too much weight into evaluating someone through digital channels only. it’s not healthy to rely too much on online interactions or internet stalking alone to ‘get to know someone’—the only truly natural and authentic way to understand who someone is is to go outside and talk to them!
