Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do (17 page)

We can blame Facebook and other social media sites for our transgressions, but there does come a point when our personal demons take over. Across the world, there have been some very extreme cases in which Facebook has ruined not only relationships but entire offscreen lives. In one story I read, an off-duty cop checked up on his wife’s online profile and found that she was having a flirtatious exchange with one of his friends. He confronted the mutual friend, punched him in the face, and ripped his shirt. The cop ended up on administrative leave and was later charged with battery. His story is benign compared to that of a young woman named Sarah, twenty-six, who was stabbed thirteen times by her estranged husband after he checked her Facebook page and found that she had changed her
relationship status to single. The couple had split four days before the murder.
Just last year, a Philadelphia man stabbed his wife because he was angry that she “liked” someone else’s post on Facebook.
Another woman ended up dead after she changed her relationship status to “single” and announced she was leaving her husband by posting on her wall. Her husband allegedly saw the status update and murdered her before killing himself.
And finally, a long-distance relationship between a man in Trinidad and a woman in London turned deadly after he found a photo on Facebook of her with another man and went to London and murdered her. Although these stories are clearly extreme, they point to the irrational feelings and rage that we can feel from learning information through social networking sites. The jealousy, embarrassment, and anger caused by seeing items on an ex’s Facebook profile (or any social media site) can lead a generally sane and levelheaded individual to emotional breakdown and incite fights, the breakup of friendships and relationships, and in some cases, physical harm and death. With the exception of these dramatic cases, for most of us, the worst-case scenario is that through snooping, our fears will be confirmed. Elissa, a journalist from Manhattan, told me, “I hate that I checked my boyfriend’s e-mails, and I hate that when I did, my fears were confirmed, because that meant I will always check his e-mails from now on.”

Many believe it is their
right
to peruse their boyfriend or girlfriend’s e-mail accounts, phone, and Facebook accounts, arguing that “only the guilty have something to hide,”
and if someone wants to keep them out of their business, they must be hiding a secret lover or budding flirtation. My friend Laura told me, “I don’t think people should be snooping but I also think there is a clear problem if someone won’t let their girlfriend or boyfriend look through their phone once in a while.”

I’ve been in relationships with exceptionally private people, and their privacy made me wonder whether they were deceiving me. I tend to leave my e-mail account open and logged in all day long on my home computer, and I have never had a lock on my iPhone. The only times I’ve made sure to sign out of my own accounts were when I was actually hiding a conversation that I did not want my significant other to read, so someone’s intense desire for privacy and diligence in signing out of online accounts makes me nervous. On the other hand, I have dated people who are careful to sign out of their e-mail and Facebook and are always sure to have a password on their phones; I would venture a guess that many readers are thinking that these exes were most likely hiding something from me. I learned, however, that some people are more private and their desire to keep their e-mails and social networking accounts secret has more to do with their values and less to do with their actions.

Certainly, Facebook provides some advantages in the personal and professional arenas of life. Some people I spoke with even said that Facebook has had a positive effect on their relationships and helped build trust and intimacy. We now know more about the people in our life—what they
are thinking about, what amuses them, and who they are hanging out with, as well as what they are doing and with whom. Sarah, a twenty-nine-year-old from Maine, told me, “There is definitely that element where you feel you need to reveal more to your significant other about who wrote on your Facebook wall or who tagged you in a photo . . . Perhaps we become more faithful in our relationships because of this.” While it’s true Facebook and the digital media world do in a way make us more accountable and can call us out on our transgressions, so many of those transgressions are initiated because of Facebook itself.

A rainy Sunday of meaningless Internet exploration can turn into a full-fledged stalking session. Feelings of rejection that we thought we had moved past can be reanimated by simply clicking through a friend’s Facebook album. Those who have broken your heart reappear through Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and chat statuses. You can unfriend and unfollow but they are always there, connected through other individuals we actually want to hear about. We may forget them, but then a little one-word comment can remind us they exist, sending us reeling into our romantic pasts.

For those of us who remember a time when these outlets did not exist, we took for granted that after breakups we could erase our exes from our lives and never accidentally (or on purpose) come across the details of their lives. Now we have access to everything. And unless we delete our accounts and disconnect our lives, we will continue in the paranoia-and-jealousy loop, continually checking our significant
others’ e-mail and fighting because of what we find on Facebook.

How many times have I told myself I’m getting off Facebook? The truth is I’m never getting off Facebook. Even though we hate so much of what it yields, we’ll continue to hack in, cheat, and fight, for one reason: we can’t stop.

I was meant for reality television. I’m going to be famous if I keep tweeting. People love my shit, seriously.

T
he words above were spoken by Teddy, a thirty-one-year-old Long Island–born gay hairstylist with whom I had become friends through work. He could not sing, dance, or cook. He was not athletic, nor was he particularly good-looking. He was not funny, nor did he possess any particularly unique knowledge. The most interesting thing about him was that he was potentially the worst speller I had ever met. The only reality show on which he had a shot of being cast was Bravo’s (now defunct) hair competition
Shear Genius
, which he denounced as “not good enough,” claiming that no one had ever come out of that show and become
truly
famous (even though Tabatha Coffey, the winner from season one, got her own show and earned a place
in reality show history). I asked Teddy what show he would be on, if he could choose; he said he thought there was a lot of interest out there for a show about his
own
life as a celebrity hairstylist and that he was working on a pitch to send around to “the networks.”

I first thought Teddy was joking around, but after spending more time with him I realized he was serious. Teddy was someone who had always wanted to be famous—I think he became a hairstylist just so he could be closer to celebrities—and I wondered if he would have worked so hard at it or aspired to that particular kind of fame before the advent of reality television or Twitter.

All of our friends knew that there was nothing about Teddy that would ever draw an audience. After all, we were in a post–
Queer Eye
age, so he was about six years too late for any producer to place him on a show merely because he was gay. (I got “lucky” when I was cast on
America’s Next Top Model
because lesbians were far less prevalent on reality television in 2005, and putting one in the midst of a dozen aspiring female models was still considered “interesting.”) No, there was nothing about Teddy that would convince anyone that he was “made” for reality television, and yet he believed wholeheartedly that it was his destiny and made it his life’s passion and long-term goal—even more than helping celebrities and regular humans look fabulous.

Teddy was resolved to make fame a reality. He was a Twitter star in his own mind; he once held a contest among his fans (he did not have any fans) to give $100 to his one
thousandth follower. Around 405, he made it $100 for his five hundredth follower. One week later, he owed $100 to his aunt Jenny. But Teddy didn’t give up. He truly believed he could “make it” by remaining “in touch” with his celebrity acquaintances and getting them to retweet his posts and @ him on their own. Despite the fact that his tweets and updates weren’t even mildly compelling, he did not hesitate to declare at every opportunity that he was more interesting than other outrageous reality stars. It was nice to see one of my peers so positive and full of hope for his future, but it would have been more heartening if he’d had some legitimate aspiration beyond having his unremarkable persona put on a pedestal by a television platform. Teddy’s fantasy seemed to me like a narcissist’s wet dream.

But what do the professionals say? The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(
DSM
), the bible of the psychiatric profession, defines people with narcissistic personality disorder as not only grandiose in their actions and statements (
I was meant to be on reality television!
) but also having a dire “need for admiration” and a “lack of empathy.” As Dr. Elias Aboujaoude explains in
Virtually You
, “DSM-certified narcissists usually believe they are ‘special and unique and can only be understood or should associate with other high-status people.’ ”

Forgive me for playing armchair psychologist, but Teddy’s behavior corresponded with this diagnosis: his constant tweets, his off-the-charts self-concept, and his belief that he should only hang out with celebrities, those whom our superficial society put up on a pedestal. In general,
Teddy’s use of social media was, if anything, amplifying his condition.

Dr. Aboujaoude argues that the number of people with narcissistic disorder has increased in recent years as the Internet fosters some of the characteristics that typify the personality disorder. Whether it is due to something inherent in our psychology or to our nonstop use of social media, most of us post and tweet and update seeking admiration and affirmation. We yearn for—and expect—others to look at us, to comment on our posts and reply to our texts. This never-ending loop feeds self-obsession; we
require
the attention to satisfy our narcissism, and so we share more, becoming even more infatuated with our display and how others will see us.

I said good-bye to my quick stint on reality television in 2005, but in some ways I feel like I’m still living on a reality show. This time, however, we’re
all
contestants. Sure, one could say our lives have always been a performance—adjusting our behavior in school, at work, with family and friends—but never before have we had our thoughts, actions, and images aired in a public place, preserved for posterity. Suddenly we’re rewarded for acting on impulse, and that impulse is to share—and we do, in a constant stream of texts, status updates, Vines, tweets, Snapchats, and Instagram posts. Now, more than ever, we want people to pay attention to us—to follow us, like us, comment on our posts, and retweet our thoughts. We gauge what is appropriate and acceptable by what we see on television and our overflowing social media feeds. Like reality TV contestants,
we wheedle and overshare in our desperation to stay in the limelight. We reveal more and consider consequences less.

Social media makes us hyperaware of where we stand in the sphere of social competition, and we’re constantly trying to calculate according to unwritten, ever-changing rules who is the most popular, how we’re getting along with our significant other, or if we’re good people—because just like the television version of this reality competition, we can get kicked off, lose friends, and alienate people. In a strange electronic version of survival of the fittest, the social media reality game show we’re all playing is about not necessarily how many friends we have but how we rank in our own minds and how secure we are in our relationships. We may have scores of friends but still feel lost and lonely (as many do), also so many of us ramp up our attention-grabbing revelations just to feel like we’re still doing okay.

One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of being on a reality television show is that you suddenly become part of a little club. Whenever you see another person who has been on reality television, for better or worse, you are instantly connected. I had a brief but intense “friendship” with a girl who’d starred on a popular reality show. We’ll call her Nikki. We traded stories, tweeted at each other, and talked about the opportunities we had or hadn’t gotten since our stints on reality TV. As time passed and our friendship developed, I began noticing some red flags.

She met most of her friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They were all her “fans” who constantly tagged and @-ed her. They made her feel famous and didn’t mind
being the minions who trailed behind her as she swanned into restaurants or bars. The minions felt special for hanging out with someone who had been on television, and she felt popular, but more important, she “looked” popular to everyone else. As weeks turned into months, the revolving door brought an onslaught of new “friends,” none staying more than a month at a time. (It’s tough being a minion!) New week, new posse. Her ability to make a brand-new acquaintance look like her best friend on social media was astounding, even impressive.

We were on the Lower East Side one night when Hotel Chantelle had just opened. We were walking by after leaving a dive bar on the corner and heading to the deli to get sandwiches before going our separate ways. We walked past the long line to get into Hotel Chantelle, where some people recognized Nikki from television and asked to take a photo. Neither she nor I was a stranger to this occurrence, but I was surprised at what happened next. My phone started buzzing in my pocket. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram alerts abounded! “Just leaving @HotelChantelle with my girl @KimmyStolz and met a fan on the way out!” Nikki had fabricated our night right in front of me. Our trip to get a sandwich had suddenly become a glamorous escapade. And then came more buzzing from Nikki’s phone. Her fans were tweeting back and Instagramming comments like “OMG I LOVE NIKKI” and “OMG how do I get to be in your shoes for a day.”