I moved states and me and this girl who’ve had a fling have been keeping in touch. We’d known eachother for a few years but became a thing a few months before I left. We’re not officially dating and talked about it and how we shouldn’t be officially together because that would be too hard on both of us far away, but we care for each other and keep in touch all the time.
Recently in the last week or so we’ve been not messaging each other as often. More time between messages, snaps, etc. I kinda felt that feeling that maybe she’s a bit less interested, but also know that things go in cycles and we can’t be messaging constantly 24/7 so it was natural that we sometimes will have periods where we talk a bit less, regardless I never looked anything up about this on social media or sought out any relationship type content.
Suddenly today, my ENTIRE instagram feed is extreme depression, existential crisis, relationship ending content. Every other reel I scroll is suddenly “when you realize one of you has to leave first” and “that feeling in your stomach when you realize they’re losing feelings” etc.
Also our IG reel blend is suddenly all the ones recommended for her are very relationshippy, mostly “friend” stuff but very themed towards texting people, relationships, etc.
I am suddenly sad and paranoid wondering if instagram knows something about us that I don’t. Like she is messaging other guy(s) suddenly and messaging me less so my algorithm knows this and wants to push depression and breakup content on me.
It seems like way too big of a coincidence and now I actually worry. I’m suddenly recommended content that signals I’m about to go through a heartbreak when I never watch or engage with that content at all.
Just posting this to get it off my chest and see if anyone’s had this happen before because it seems too odd, it’s kind of scary to be honest
TL;DR: algorithm on Ig suddenly showing me depression and breakup content right as my long distance fling and I have had a brief slowdown in communication. Never sought out or interacted with this type of content, but suddenly today it’s me entire feed. Feel like social media algorithm knows something I don’t (we have an ig blend). Now I’m actually feeling depressed.
Comments
I think you’re trying to distract yourself with a low-stakes mystery rather than deal with the actual issue you’re facing.
You’ve also got a nice scapegoat for feeling depressed about your whatevership. “The algorithm made me feel this way and not the state of the whatevership itself.”
IG pushes the content you interact with, and your friends and close contacts interact with, even if they havent liked it.
If you are spending any time at all stopping to interact with even one or two breakup reels, even just to spend a few seconds of screen time on it, it’ll notice. It identifies patterns in what you watch. You can force the algorithm to show you specific content even – if I want to watch cooking videos, I can force this by only spending screen time on cooking videos, until my feed is all cooking videos.
Likely you have seen one random breakup as a test reel offered to you not really thinking about it (possibly brought on by following someone else going through a hard time), then maybe you were offered a second or third and the algorithm picked it up from there.
The blend is likely the same. It’s showing her the content she wants to see, and you. You’re overthinking that this is some conspiracy, it’s not. But you should address the actual issue and speak to her.