Twitter and Romance: The Backlash Behind the Screen
graphic by Emma Baynes
The first time I really got Twitter—the first time I got invested, when I couldn’t stop checking my timeline and refresh the page to see more and more tweets; was right in the middle of the pandemic.
The pandemic has become synonymous with regret and shame for me; that translated to my foray into the Twitter-sphere. At the time of my Twitter 'deep dive', I had just been told that I was infected with the same virus that had us quarantined for all these months.
Getting that news through a text message and feeling absolutely disjointed in myself was horrible—I tried to do whatever I could to make myself feel better and less numb. After being shoved into a small room along with my mother for two weeks, hoping that the virus would naturally leave my system, I turned to every resource that I could to keep myself preoccupied—music, reading, writing, and of course, Twitter.
In the beginning, Twitter was a wonderful reprieve from the disastrous situation that I had found myself in. Shitposts, musicals, people to talk to about anything I wanted to; it was archaic in a manner. It was like being able to run wild and make an entirely new identity for myself. Online, and especially on Twitter, it felt like the reckoning of something new and almost lawless. No one would ever have to know, and this was something so fresh and fun. And hey? No consequences, right?
The thing about Twitter was that, in a way, it was designed to be addictive—it was designed for teenagers to find a safe place to enjoy content and explore themselves like never before. It wasn’t like Instagram, where photos had to be a part of the equation; on Twitter, you could hide behind cryptically typed tweets and fake nicknames.
In a way, this was good—it was a chance for kids to explore themselves and learn about their identities in ways never even imagined before. Access to the internet didn’t always lead to something awful; it allowed teenagers and young people to think about social issues, raising awareness, sexuality, and gender in ways never fathomed before.
But just because it wasn’t bad doesn’t mean it wasn’t addictive. Being active on Twitter and being inside the Twitter bubble meant being wholly detached from the real world and living only to refresh, click, like and retweet. And to do it over and over again, to try and take breaks, only to have an inkling to go back to Twitter, was a part of the toxic bubble that Twitter thrived on. The constant ‘cancel’ threads and the unchecked system of slurs and hate being flung to its’ users almost every day; there was no denying Twitter’s virulent atmosphere.
I saw a trend on Twitter as I switched from fandom to fandom, starting with Glee at the start of my quarantine to cartoon Twitter in February and March; there was this obsession with online relationships. Twitter users who were barely teenagers tweeting out proclamations of love and having a crush on ‘oomf’, an abbreviated version of saying ‘one of my followers’, was intoxicating to see on the timeline every day.
Eventually, I found myself in that same sickening pink and euphoric glow of crushes and romances and looking at certain users’ selfies and ‘face reveals’ a little too closely. It was all terrifying in hindsight—the clutch of my heart, the feeling of warmth pooling at the bottom of my chest, the affection strumming through my veins over people that I had never met and would never meet. At the time, it was pure excitement and adrenaline running through my body, making me giddy on it.
The thrill of Twitter still hasn’t been lost on me—even though I’ve recently sworn off the app, I still get a feeling of wanting whenever I think about the radiant comments and affirmations of beauty that I received after clearly asking for it. Along with the pang, I feel the cringe filling me to the brim, and I wonder as I write this—was I really that desperate to be loved that I put my face out there for complete strangers to validate me?
This is how the catalyst of my departure from Twitter really started—at the beginning of January 2021. I had one online relationship before; just as I had joined Twitter, and all things considered, that one still left me with beautiful memories and fond recollections.
And if not for the distance and the lack of practicality, that relationship may have even lasted me longer. I hold onto those memories firmly even now; though the ‘relationship’ didn’t last much longer than 2 weeks—it still made me realise what it felt like to be genuinely liked. And after that experience, I told that I had learnt my lesson; online relationships didn’t work out in any circumstances.
And then, simply put, they came into the picture. I had known this person for a couple of months before we became close, and I always thought something was comforting about them. Eventually, at the start of January and in the spirit of new beginnings, we started talking, bit by bit. And then everything exploded; in every sense of the word.
What started off as something that made me genuinely happy and excited ended up making me vulnerable, dependable and last of all, helpless. It was like the Twitter bubble had expanded; all the validation and truth that I thought I had compounded in my time on Twitter had been translated to my relationship with them.
This person ricocheted repeatedly, and in short, they couldn’t keep their story straight. They told me things that I think now to be lies, painting themselves out like this victim I know is anything but. When I think about the hours that I spent talking to them—the hours of sleep missed and the words that I spilt in affection for them from the depths of my heart.
At the time, it indeed destroyed me. The successive steps of lying to me about their mental health followed by blocking me and creating an entirely new identity for themselves—it felt like a rejection. The promises were broken, and the love they had for me seemingly lost; at
the time, it didn’t feel like them running away. It felt like something was clinically and objectively wrong with me.
I wanted to turn down myself, put myself in front of a machine to be examined, to find out what about me was just so unlovable. In a way, this person symbolised everything that Twitter meant to me in these last few months; and it showed me how everything could fall apart in
seconds and how these words on the screen meant nothing.
And so my relationship with Twitter crumbled like dust finally settling—and it’s hard to tell if this is a good thing or not at this point, but right now, I can definitely say that this is what I need.
In the days following the breaking apart and realising that I had been fooled, manipulated, whatever word fits properly—I began to feel stuck in the person I was during that month and what that relationship took from me.
It took my naiveness, and it took away that blind, unadulterated trust that I put in every single person, even though I had never met them. It took away the hope I had that everyone went into things with the best
intentions. Maybe in a way, it was good, and perhaps it went a long way in teaching me something.
It taught me that sometimes yes, people will hurt you, and there’s not always going to be an amicable solution. Not everyone will apologise to you and be a good person in the end because that’s just not how human nature works at the end of the day. People can be mean and manipulative behind those rosy cheeks and disarming grins—and the sooner I start to trust my gut, the better.
It also taught me to never trust white people again, but that’s neither here nor there.