Amidst the millions of social media users is a sizable portion well-acquainted with what I’ll call “post-post anxiety.” It’s an awful condition, really; with symptoms that begin after you’ve fired off a tweet or photo that is, on second-thought, offensive or uncomplimentary. Once this anxiety has taken hold, even your most haphazardly created content can seem like a stand-alone representation of you. Others might see it that method, too, for social networks does not prefer nuance, forgiveness, or any sort of holistic photo of its users.
Peak post-post anxiety occurs in the very first minutes after the post goes public: It can be disabling or, for some, downright nauseating. What if someone interprets your tweet about Elizabeth Warren as misogynistic? Or even worse, what if that tweet is misogynistic? Do you let the post keep up and hope that you’re overthinking it? If post-post anxiety were infrequent, perhaps we would not need to talk about it. We might simply compose it off as another unlikely and regrettable threat of the web. However the condition extends far beyond pedestrian gaffes or bad images. It’s your whole Tumblr exposing mid-twenties angst, it’s the hot-blooded political blog site you started in college throughout a particularly (ugh, tacky) political awakening.
Post-post anxiety begins when we regret our oversharing, and the web is wising up.
In December of 2018, Instagram presented “Buddies,” a feature that permits users to choose who gets to see their content. Close Friends offers you the possibility to post more genuine content– a meme that captures your damaged heart, let’s say, or a shout-out to your 2020 presidential hopeful. When you’re trying to find something more long-term than the quick-and-dirty ephemera that “Close Pals” offers, the social media protective gear you look for is a finsta, a different, phony Instagram account that is completely personal.
Tavi Gevenson, the first individual I ever knew with a finsta, told me that she utilized hers to “work things out.” She’s had 3 finstas given that high school. She said that, at first, “they were locations I could vent” but that eventually she recognized finstas “weren’t exactly private” and that “working things out” was contingent upon “being verified by lots of pals.”
The “shared album,” a long time function of