To Unfollow Or Not To Unfollow

In the digital age, sharing custody of interests isn’t easy.

- Blythe Roberson

Ending a relationship in 2019 involves a lot of unfollowing. To get over someone, common wisdom holds, you can’t have little reminders of them popping up on your phone nonstop. So you delete their number and you block each other on social media and you try very hard not to open an incognito window just to look at their blocked Twitter. But while I’ve done my share of unfollowing, my general approach to breaking up in the extremely online age involves surrendering to the digital footprints my exes have left in my feed. Lately, this has meant watching a lot of BMX videos on Instagram.

Earlier this year, I spent a few months hooking up with a BMX biker. (I am cool.) During this time, I followed him on Instagram, where he almost exclusively posted videos of himself BMXing. He tagged BMX publications and BMX teams, and I followed them, too. I decided it would be weird to follow the guys on his team— known in many circles as “his friends whom I had never met”—but I gave in and followed one guy anyway, mainly because I saw a video of him dunking a basketball using the wheel of his bike. I showed it to a friend, who responded, “I would follow him to hell.”

All of a sudden, my In stagram feed was largely BMX. To be totally honest, before hooking up with this guy, I did not know or care what BMX was. I thought maybe it was like snowmobiling. Turns out it’s just biking, and it has to do with men grinding and bonking their pegs at skate parks or on ramps and rails in the real world. It also turns out that BMX is actually very interesting.