Growing up alongside a strong presence of social media, I’ve been aware of the contrast between people’s behavior online and in person for a long time, from watching Catfish to reading comments from keyboard warriors. The internet provides an escape from everyday life, desensitizing people to what it’s like to communicate face to face, and creating an incentive to say things that people may not have the courage to say to someone’s face. In addition to that, it’s so easy for words on a screen to get misinterpreted or lost in translation.
I’ve been especially conscious of this incongruity as I’ve started to explore the world of romantic relationships. Like many other young women and teenage girls, this behavior is pushed to its extreme in my Instagram DMs and on Tinder. I’ve never had a guy greet me in person with, “If I rearrange some of the letters in your name I can spell anal,” or “Wanna fuck?” But in online communication, it seems to be a regular thing. Most of these messages are from men who I’ve never met, so it’s easy for me to press the unmatch or block button and remove them from my life. What these men say can still bother me, but it’s easier for me to shake than in-person interactions because I know that I will never have to confront this person.
But not all unwanted messages online are from strangers. Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I’ve received unwanted messages from my male classmates that made me feel uncomfortable, violated, and unsafe. Blocking them online may stop the unwanted online communication, but that does nothing to prevent them from behaving inappropriately in person or alleviate the stress of having to see them every day. I wish I could gain back the class time I spent in fear—afraid of how they would treat me in person, how they might react if I blocked them, and of being misinterpreted if I rejected them.
In middle school, these comments were encouraged in a way by the popularity of a website called Ask.fm, where people could anonymously ask questions by posting a link to your Facebook page. I quickly realized that this platform welcomed inappropriate comments—giving 13 to 14 year old boys the ability to send you anonymous messages gets really perverse really fast. These messages affected the way I felt at school. I’d scan the hallways and classrooms, trying to pair anonymous messages to faces, always wondering who had said what. I was suddenly aware that my school environment was not as safe as I’d thought.
In high school, boys left anonymity behind and started to comment whatever they wanted on my Instagram and Facebook posts. For years, I deleted the comments and never talked about them in attempt to be the bigger person—but also out of fear, because I didn’t want to confront these guys, not knowing how they’d respond. I’d been told that boys will be boys, and I wasn’t even sure if I could convince people they were wrong. So instead I went about my days trying to avoid all contact with anyone who said negative things about me online.
It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I changed the way I dealt with inappropriate messages. There was a person who continually left comments on my Instagram and sent me text messages, demeaning me physically and intellectually. He also attacked my friends, and got his friends to gang up against me. I was over it. I wouldn’t tolerate silently sitting across from someone in class who was extremely hostile to me online. Before I went to the administration, a teacher heard him threatening me in the lunchroom, starting the process of getting help in handling the situation. He got suspended for his online interactions with me. Getting one of the most “popular” boys suspended from school held unfortunate consequences for me, creating tension between me and people who were loyal to him. But it also had its benefits—I had to adjust who I spent time with, and by the end of high school, I felt like the people who I was friends with were not only loyal but shared the same values as me.
Before this point it seemed completely foreign to me to reach out for help regarding unwanted messages. I feared that I’d get in some sort of trouble, or I’d be told “boys will be boys” for the billionth time, so I kept it private. This helped me realize that it’s not only okay, but extremely important to hold people accountable for their actions online. There might always be a gap between the way people behave online and in person, but online actions have no less weight than their actions offline.
My most recent experience with unwanted messages was different from the rest. For most of my second semester at college, this guy in one of my lectures wasn’t even on my radar. He usually sat far behind me in the fifty-person lecture class and had never said a word to me. One day he friended me on Facebook and I accepted, just as I would anyone else who went to my college. Almost immediately, he messaged me asking about how the class was going and if I wanted to hang out sometime. It seemed like a perfectly friendly message on the surface, but something about it really freaked me out. I didn’t know him; what motivated him to suddenly reach out to me? I responded politely, telling him a bit about the paper I was writing and deflecting his invitation to hang out, saying maybe another time. I hoped he’d notice that I wasn’t interested and stop messaging me. Over the next few weeks, he continued to send me random messages and asking me to hang out. I was at a loss for how to deal with it.
I had a lot of anxiety about rejecting him over Facebook Messenger. It’s easy to misinterpret the tone and intention of words on a screen. I’ve had my fair share of rejection, and I didn’t want him to assume there was a personal reason that I rejected him, or that I rejected him because of his appearance. The lack of personal connection with him made me fear that he’d read my rejection as harsher than it actually was.
So instead, I stopped responding completely. I felt paralyzed, and even though this person seemed nonthreatening, I still feared going to class. I didn’t know how he interpreted my silence, and then the silence lasted so long that I was worried how he’d interpret a response from me and what it’d warrant. Sitting in a room with someone who had extensively reached out to me online but had never spoken to me in person felt mysterious and terrifying. The messages continued even after I returned home for summer, which finally motivated me to end the interaction. I wish I could say that I stood up for myself and explained what was wrong to him, but I ended it by letting him know that I was transferring schools and moving to another state.
I feel that it’s somewhat unfair that I ignored him and didn’t tell him clearly that I wasn’t interested right away, but I stand firm in my belief that the frequency of his communication crossed a line. His relentlessness was so shocking to me, mostly because it seemed to be the exact opposite of what I would do if I were in his position. I’ve taken the risk of being the first person to initiate a relationship, and I’ve faced rejection a few times and even no response. Either of those outcomes are enough cause me to hide under my bed for a week and never try to interact with them again. This classmate and I might be examples of two extremes, but I feel that the disparity between the way that men and women behave online and in person is extremely vast.
In these three very different experiences with my male classmates and social media, I notice a common theme of entitlement. Those 13 and 14 year-old boys thought it was their business to ask me what my breast size was, with no regard to how violated that made me feel. My high school classmate thought there was no problem with commenting horrible things about me on my own posts. My college classmate made it seem like he was entitled to my time, even after I showed no interest. The relevant platforms for communicating online have changed so much during my lifetime, and are evolving faster than I can comprehend. The freedom that social media gives you makes me really excited for the future, but also afraid, because I really have no idea what kinds of interactions I will have ahead of me as I continue to navigate my relationships.