[ncpa-cpl]

> Wow. I have problems with Instragram

I remember that for a few months before my partner broke up with me, their IG feed was full of reels, posts, 'comedy', 'psychology tips', about people complaining about their partners. And also lots of Insta influencers posts giving relationship tips or encouraging people to break up for diverse reasons.

While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life. Unless of course your life consisted only of perfectly curated Insta moments.

[jstarfish]

> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life.

In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by how toxic and outright false the pop psychology memes were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the cluster-B LARPing.

"Your partner won't give you access to their financial accounts? That's domestic violence, and he probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder too! What's his is yours, so just use his credit card to book plane tickets without asking and remember that him yelling at you about it is verbal abuse, so get out while you still can before he starts beating you! And remember abuse thrives in secrecy-- so make sure you tell everybody how he was so aggressive that you were in constant fear for your life!"

Sorry you were on the receiving end of [whatever your case is]. Not even the strongest of relationships can withstand reinforcement of sentiments as corrosive as Instagram, where you're a useless piece of shit if you can't/won't support your partner's ambitions of joining the jet set.

You lost your partner to a cult. They're called "followers" for a reason. It starts with separating victims from their loved ones...

[bcrosby95]

I saw a youtube short like this. It was a video demonstrating the "perfect" guy. It started reasonable, with him saying "oh can you check this on my phone? the passcode is XYZ"

Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually telling it to her so she could do something with it is probably a thing that happened.

But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.

[jstarfish]

> But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner. But men are supposed to feel ashamed of themselves if they're not willing to just blindly go along with it.

The irony is, they call this sort of victim the "ideal" guy, while simultaneously deriding him as a "simp" to the rest of their cliques. It's loathesome. I pity anybody involved in the dating game these days.

[nailer]

> It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner.

No.

Domestic violence is domestic violence.

“Long game triangulation” is manipulative behaviour. It is not domestic violence.

Domestic violence is having your mother beat your skull with one of those maglite baton torches the police use.

Saying things that aren’t violence are violence is exactly the kind of awful behaviour others in this thread are complaining about.

[thiht]

Domestic violence is more than one thing, and it includes psychological abuse. Not all violence is physical.

[nailer]

No, domestic violence is only one thing, that thing is domestic violence. All violence is physical. Other forms of abuse that are not physical are not violence.

If we have a verbal confrontation one of us has hurt feelings. If it turns violent, there is actual violence. Words have meanings.

You can care about other types of abuse. You should care about other types of abuse.

But claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.

This is massively wrong at best and evil at worst.

[nonethewiser]

Even still, the fixation on the passcode thing is insecurity.

[kridsdale1]

Literally

[lelanthran]

I would like to see that; what should I search youtube for?

[bcrosby95]

I have no clue. I mostly get warhammer, video game, and programming videos. It showed up in my shorts one day so I took a look. I have long since purged it from my history because I want to minimize the chances of getting something like that again.

[megablast]

You saw a weird video on youtube. Parent saw some weird stuff on instagram.

What is the point here?

[ethanbond]

That algorithmic feeds inject weird stuff into people’s brains

[xwolfi]

It's funny, I am married with a child, do my best and my wife too, but sometimes she gets dragged into meme-expectation that take her a long time to recover from. I cant see nor understand much of the source of these: Im an immigrant and I cant read her native language, and I dont know if it s a girl thing or if it's actually me not fitting reasonable expectations, but damn I wished everyone could look at their own relationship without trying to copy the appearance of others.

What seems to help is when an idolized version of relationship is suddenly broken into pieces and you discover your model was actually completely miserable and whatever you expected became trivial relative to that.

[neura]

I had an ex that did this based on fantasy novels. "Why can't you be more of a man's man?" "What, from your romance novels?" "Yes!" "Ummm..."

Ironically, the thought never even occurred to me to respond with "Why can't you be more of a <insert stereotypical sought after characterization here>?"

Oh well, we haven't been together for a long time. :)

Point being, it's not just instagram or even social media at large. They've just made the situation worse. This is deep rooted in most of society and isn't going to end any time soon. Just need to find people that are strong enough to not fall victim to this (even if they don't bring it up, like our partners did).

[kodah]

If someone is constantly projecting relationship advice social media topics on you'd I'd venture to say you're in an abusive/manipulative relationship as opposed to a healthy one. Glad you got out.

I've learned more recently that healthy relationships aren't empirically so. Instead, there's "signs" of a healthy relationship; determining the health of your relationship must be a two way conversation. It requires assessment, honesty, and participation by both parties as a qualifier as well as the ability to listen without your ego involved. That's not to say all of those aren't challenging things to do in their own right just to say that the health of a relationship will be explored differently by different sets of people.

[logifail]

> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect [...]

My $0.02: We are taught not to aim for perfection at work[0], that should apply to relationships too.

[0] https://hbr.org/tip/2020/02/dont-let-perfect-be-the-enemy-of...

[pixl97]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

>It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem.

The internet and the options it gives, I believes leads people to think they have far more relationship options then they actually have, and the options they think they have are not as good as they believe. A lot of people put a lot of work in selling a perfect image online, but those rarely hold up in reality for any amount of time.

Of course this doesn't mean we should stay in bad relationships either. Our society doesn't really teach us how to have good relationships, especially in a capitalistic fashion (hey, just spend more money and everything will be ok), and quite a lot of us had really poor examples from our parents generation on how to treat other people.

[neura]

I just want to note one little difference. "The internet and the >perceived< options it gives, ..."

[jsemrau]

The joy of exploitative recommendation algorithms. I had a discussion with my daughter about TikTok's Glamour Filter the other day and now my whole feed is full of glamour filter posts. This is so unhealthy (mentally).

[thiht]

At least on TikTok filters are explicitly marked as such.

[jvm___]

All the ideas that the world will be perfect if you would just think thoughts like these...

"manifest what you want from the world" and "think positive thoughts and everything will be ok"

Is actually kind of true when you think about all the algorithms that run social media. If you only ever search for cats and scroll past anything political, the algorithms will learn what you like and feed you more cats.

So, if you're searching up relationship advice, and spending time on those things, that's what you get back from 'the borg'.

You do have control over what social media shows you, it's just that you need to work against your basest desires in order to get there.

[Zak]

Youtube occasionally, but regularly tries to show me culture war content even though I never watch it and usually tell it "don't recommend this".

[harry8]

It's like those "drug pushers" we were told about in school but don't seem to actually exist who use weed to constantly try to get you onto more lucrative for them heroin no matter how many times you say "no thanks." Heard that so many times at school, never heard anyone encountering anything like it in the real world.

But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come on, just try a little culture war" because its lucrative for them, no matter how many times you say no thank you.

It's really sick but yeah, obviously lucrative and Larry, Seregey & Mark clearly need the money.

[neura]

I think this was an issue that was really only an issue for specific geographic areas, but also an easy bandwagon to jump on and look like you're "fighting the good fight". It was an actual problem in one area from my childhood, but never saw it anywhere else.

Otherwise, fully and wholeheartedly agree that it's now a global issue and is indeed real. Welcome to the "global community" we were always told was going to be such an advancement for society.

[askvictor]

Not just the new/tech companies, but gaming/gambling companies, and really, a lot of large businesses in general.

[jvm___]

The gaps of "what do we show now" are filled with popular content, so culture war content is what you notice but there's probably other tamer things that only the algorithms know is popular.

[neura]

Yeah, it's very much a game of "well, other people fit this profile, but also tend to watch this other thing, we should recommend that, as it will probably hook this person as well. With any luck, they'll be grateful that we introduced them!"

[formerly_proven]

From the algorithmic feed PoV it's a very high value cluster (average watchtime has to be very high, audience retention is probably quite excellent) so it's unsurprising that it'll try to get you hooked from time to time.

[andrepd]

I watched a funny video of the President of my country mis-pronouncing a word in English. The recommended videos afterward were comprised ENTIRELY of the local far-right party's propaganda.

[xherberta]

Observe how this amounts to crime. The platform has motive: -newly single users attract more views -newly single users are worth more to advertisers because they’re likely to spend on appearance, travel, new hobbies, and big ticket items formerly shared with a partner. The platform also has opportunity because it has data on exactly what content has highest probability of nudging a particular user to break up. (Perhaps the “you are being abused by a narcissist” stuff others have mentioned works nicely.) (See also Shoshanna Zuboff)

[xherberta]

Crime as in algo crime; there are not humans pulling a lever labeled “trash this relationship.”