I found this note on Substack a while back, and I promised I’d…

Read more

This month I wanted something different. I wanted to write about something I love. Something that is mine in the most ordinary and joyful way, and it also happens to carry a history so extraordinary it stops me every time I remember it.

I do Pilates. I love Pilates. I show up in my cute color-coordinated workout set, I move through the class, and then I go to the marketplace and I get a matcha. That’s my routine. It’s mine and it’s simple and it makes me happy. It grounds me in my body in a way that nothing else quite does. It’s like that particular feeling of stillness you find when you stop thinking and start listening to what your muscles are actually telling you.

I am also a woman in tech. I work in information systems. I care deeply about human-centered design and who gets to use a system, how it was built, and whether the people who need it most can actually reach it. I think about access constantly, in software and in life.

And this Women’s History Month, those two things (my love of Pilates and my obsession with accessibility) collapsed into the same story. Because the reason I get to have my routine? The reason any of us do? It runs directly through two women whose names the wellness industry has not said loudly enough.

Kathy Stanford Grant and Lolita San Miguel.

Let me tell you about them.

the actual history of pilates

Before we get to these two women, we need context of this story, because the version that seems to be popular is wrong in every which way.

Bed springs. Makeshift apparatus. A prison camp. That is where this practice was born. In constraint, in scarcity, for people who had nothing but their bodies and needed to keep them whole. It was a technology of access from the very beginning.

By the 1920s, Joseph Pilates had moved to New York, opened a studio near dance rehearsal halls, and built a following among professional dancers. That proximity to elite dance is where Pilates picked up its “exclusive” reputation. A reputation that had nothing to do with his original intention and everything to do with who happened to be nearby.

And then, in the 1950s and 60s, two women came through his studio. They trained under him directly, completed over 2,200 hours of apprenticeship each, and became the only two people Joseph Pilates ever personally certified to carry his method forward. Just two. In his entire lifetime.

A Black woman from Boston. A Puerto Rican woman from New York.

The founder of Pilates chose two women of color to preserve his life’s work. He chose Kathy and Lolita. That is the story.

kathy stanford grant listened to the body in front of her

Kathy Stanford Grant was born in Boston in 1921. She was the first Black student to study classical ballet at the Boston Conservatory of Music. This fact alone tells you everything you need to know about the rooms she entered and the resistance she navigated just to be in them. She danced her way to New York, performed in the first racially integrated show on Broadway, toured Europe and the Middle East, and then, in the mid-1950s, suffered a severe knee injury that brought her to Joseph Pilates’ studio.

She went to recover. She stayed for the rest of her life.

After earning her certification, Kathy taught Pilates at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for over thirty years. She worked with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She ran the Pilates studio at Henri Bendel in New York City, embedding the practice into institutions that served communities far beyond the elite dance world where Pilates had made its name.

But what makes Kathy a figure I think about specifically when I’m in class, what makes her a figure I think about, as someone who works in human-centered design, is her teaching philosophy. She did not believe in one-size-fits-all. She explicitly, fundamentally rejected it.

In UX and human-centered design, we call this user-centered thinking, which is pretty much the radical insistence that you design for the specific person in front of you, not an imaginary average user. You observe. You adapt. You meet people where they actually are, not where it would be convenient for them to be.

Kathy’s students describe her as almost witchy in her ability to see what a body needed. She would take an exercise Joseph Pilates created and reconfigure it on the spot to make sense for whoever was in the room. She had invented what she called “pre-Pilates” exercises, which is a coined vocabulary term for bodies that weren’t ready for the standard sequence yet. She was designing onboarding and lowering the barrier to entry without lowering their end results.

One of her guiding principles, passed down through generations of students: “Approach an exercise not with the goal of perfecting it, but to learn from it each time.”1

That is the philosophy I feel in my body every time I’m in class. That particular quality of attention honed in on just listening to it. Being curious about what’s happening rather than judging whether I’m doing it right. I didn’t know until recently that I was practicing a philosophy Kathy Stanford Grant spent her career building. But I was. We all are.

lolita san miguel built the infrastructure

Lolita San Miguel was born in New York in 1934 to Puerto Rican parents. She trained as a dancer, became a soloist with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, and found Pilates the same way Kathy did: through a knee injury that sent her looking for something that would actually help. She sought out Joseph Pilates directly, trained alongside Kathy, and earned the only other personal ceritifcation he ever granted.

And then she did something different. She built infrastructure.

In 1977, she moved to Puerto Rico and founded Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico, where she integrated Pilates into the company’s training from the beginning. She wasn’t waiting for the practice to trickle down to communities outside the New York wellness world. She was taking it there herself.

Then she thought bigger. She created the Lolita’s Legacy Teacher Training Program, a comprehensive 500-hour curriculum now offered in 6 languages and taught across 18 countries. She designed it with a specific intention: to carry Joseph Pilates’ original wish that everyone should be doing his method. Not some people. Everyone.

In systems design, this is called building for scale and localization; creating something that holds integrity as it grows, and that adapts to every context it enters without losing its core. Lolita built a multilingual, multinational certification pipeline. She was doing distributed systems design for an entire movement practice.

Her guiding belief, in her own words: “…life goes on — the work has to keep up with the latest developments.”2 Continuous learning. Iteration. She was describing an ethose of perpetual improvement applied to the human body.

Lolita is, as of this writing, the last living person certified directly by Joseph Pilates. She is in her nineties. She is still teaching.

When I grab my matcha after class and take the long walk home feeling loose and centered and like I actually live in my body, that is Lolita’s system working. She built the pipeline that made it possible for this practice to reach me, in my city, at a price point I could afford even back when I was a college student, through instructors who were trained in a lineage that goes all the way back to a source.

the things they made possible for me

I want to be honest about something. When I first got into Pilates, I didn’t know any of this. I knew I liked the way it felt. I liked that it asked me to be present. Really present. And I don’t mean the distracted kind of present where you’re mentally somewhere else while your body goes through the motions. I liked that it was mine in a way that felt personal and quiet and centering.

I wrote this quote last September when a viral moment made this history suddenly urgent to talk about. But I want to sit with the second half of the last sentence right now: history proves otherwise. And the proof is Kathy and Lolita. Their existence, and their specific, documented, irreplaceable role in making this practice what it is, means that every time I show up to class, I am practicing something that was shaped by women who looked like me. A Black woman and a Puerto Rican woman.

I am Afro-Latina. That is both of them theoretically. And I did not know that when I fell in love with this practice, but I think some part of me felt it. That particular ease of being in a space that, at its foundation, was designed with people like me in mind. They didn’t put me as an afterthought or diversity initiative. They put me at the foundation.

That’s what good design does. It holds you without announcing itself. It creates conditions where you can just be. Where you can just listen to your body, do your class, grab your matcha, feel good, and go home. You don’t have to know the architecture to live inside it. But knowing it changes something. It makes the joy feel even more mine.

This Women’s History Month, I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you for the philosophy I feel in my body every time I slow down and listen. Thank you for the infrastructure that made this accessible to me. Thank you for the lineage that means when I walk into a studio, I am walking into something that, at its core, was always built for me too.

Kathy Stanford Grant and Lolita San Miguel.

The fact that they were women of color is, honestly, the cherry on top with extra spinkles. It makes an already beautiful story feel like it was written specifically for me. And maybe, in some small way, it was.

Happy Women’s History Month! Learn the history of your favorite women pioneers and innovators. Say their names. Engage in what’s meant for us and appreciate what’s designed for us.

footnotes & recommendations for further reading

⭐️ Kurniawan, A., Tomoliyus, Ratna Budiarti, Alim, A., & Imam Safei. (2024). Effect of 12-week pilates exercises on sleep quality, stress levels and fatigue in college students. International Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health, 11(3), 361–364. https://doi.org/10.22271/kheljournal.2024.v11.i3f.3366

⭐️ Benedith, G.E., Pilates, Raven’s price tags, and the gatekeeping of wellness (2025).

The Peer Review Club

Pilates, Raven’s price tags, and the gatekeeping of wellness

She posted a video comparing Pilates to Bottega Veneta…

Read more

8 months ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · genesis elizabeth

⭐️ Benedith, G.E., Women by nature, childfree by choice (2026).

The Gigi Diaries

Women by nature, childfree by choice

A few weeks ago, I found myself reading one of those unusual thinkpieces that feel simultaneously pointless and desperately judgmental. Someone had published a post about women, specifically Tracee Ellis Ross, choosing not to have children, framing it as some sort of revolutionary, self-deterministic act of rejecting Christian pro-natalist expectations…

Read more

3 months ago · 9 likes · genesis elizabeth

But hire a person of color who brings cultural expertise to reach Black and brown markets? Suddenly you’re a “DEI hire.” Suddenly we’re downplaying qualifications.

Being called a “DEI hire” is practically being called a slur.

The wildest part to me is: both personality hires and diversity hires are hired for qualities beyond purely technical skills. Both bring value that isn’t on a traditional resume. The difference? Personality hires maintain the status quo. DEI hires challenge it.

And sometimes, you could be both.

But often, personality hires are praised for the ACTUAL nepotism and favoritism that DEI critics claim to oppose. Think about it. Who gets hired for “culture fit”? Usually people who remind the hiring manager of themselves. Who gets hired for “good energy”? Usually people from similar backgrounds who share communication styles. Who gets a pass on meeting the minimum qualifications? Usually people with insider connections.

Meanwhile, diversity hires are scrutinized more heavily, told to prove themselves constantly, held to HIGHER standards, and subject to constant questioning of their legitimacy.

And now people are throwing around “DEI hire” like somehow being hired through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives means you’re unqualified, that you took someone else’s spot, that you’re just there to check a box or meet a quota.

kid rock calling jay z a “dei hire”

As I predicted, Bad Bunny’s official halftime show reached over 100 MILLION viewers. Jay Z’s halftime pick drew 135 million viewers whereas Kid Rock’s “alternative” show reached 6.1 million viewers. Then Kid Rock went and called Jay Z a “DEI hire” for being in charge of the Super Bowl’s halftime programming.

The stats reveal that DEI isn’t just morally right but it’s also what the audiences actually want. The NFL chose Jay Z and Bad Bunny because they know their audience and what drives viewership.

Calling Jay Z a “DEI hire” frames racial inclusion as illegitimate or unearned. Kid Rock’s comments reveals more about his attachment to an older symbolic order than about Jay Z’s qualifications.

Jay Z and Roc Nation signed a long-term partnership with the NFL in 2019. This was a strategic business decision by the NFL to boost viewership and cultural relevance. The results spoke for themselves. He was hired because he understands culture, audience, and what drives engagement. That’s expertise and business strategy.

The NFL has a predominantly Black player base and a diverse viewership. Hiring someone who understands that culture isn’t “lowering standards,” it’s just raising the bar by choosing someone qualified to deliver what audiences really want.

DEI hiring is about correcting biased systems that systemically exclude qualified candidates. Jay Z’s cultural, entrepreneurial, and artistic influence is empirically measurable considering his economic impact, cultural capital and institutional partnership. Framing him as the NFL “token” is absurd and labeling him DEI is only a way of “protecting” the symbolic authority of whiteness in elite cultural institutions.

what science says about personality hiring

Research shows that personality tests are only modest predictions of performance.

A few months ago, a coworker shared with me an article that is one of my favorite scientific investigations currently valid in academia. The article was a 2021 meta-analysis of 63 studies examining personality and earnings in the workplace. Here’s what I found: Personality traits predict income even when controlling for education and cognitive ability1. Conscientious, open, and extraverted people earn more. Agreeable people earn less, especially in competitive American markets.

In other words, companies ARE hiring for personality. The market does reward certain personality profiles. But here’s the double standard: When companies hire for “culture fit” and “energy,” — personality traits that correlate with white, middle-class communication styles — nobody complains. That’s just good hiring.

But when the NFL partners with Jay Z because he has the openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion that predict success in entertainment, PLUS the cultural expertise to understand their audience? Suddenly it’s a “DEI hire.”

The studies conducted in Anglophone countries (USA, the UK, Australia) showed a stronger positive association between earnings and the trait of conscientiousness, and a stronger negative association between earning and the trait of agreeableness. Yes, that’s correct. The trait of agreeableness was strongly linked to lower income earnings.

The research proves that regardless, personality traits pay off DIFFERENTLY across cultures. What works in America might not work in Japan. What succeeds in Germany differs from what succeeds in the UK. This is exactly why DEI hiring matters. Jay Z understands American hip hop culture, Black culture, Latino culture, all the cultures that make up majority of the NFL’s player base and audience. That’s not lowering standards. That’s hiring someone with the specific cultural expertise your market demands.

You wouldn’t hire a personality that works in Tokyo to manage your New York office. So why criticize hiring someone who understands the specific cultural market you’re trying to reach?

However, even the strongest trait, conscientiousness, explains only a small portion of behavior and job performance. So personality hiring is not a neutral workplace oracle, it’s probabilistic and limited.

The concept of “culture fit” is purely a political technology used to quietly institutionalize class markers and “sameness.” Personality-based hiring often collapses into subjective judgments about “vibes,” “fit,” and “polish,” which correlate with class, race, and gender norms.

Ironically, the research suggests that homogenous personalities reduce cognitive diversity and may be harmful towards problem-solving and innovation skills.

what DEI actually means

A huge misconception is that DEI means “let’s just hire colored people.” In reality, it actually means “let’s hire qualified people who bring perspectives and expertise we don’t currently have.”

Think about it this way. If you’re a social services organization working in El Paso, you need people who speak Spanish. You need people who understand the community. You need cultural experts who can navigate the specific needs of that demographic. That’s not lowering standards. That’s recognizing that language skills and cultural competency ARE qualifications.

I graduated college with a degree in computer science but my minor specialized in technical communication. When I took a course called “Professional & Technical Writing for Diverse Audiences,” as required, I learned that specialized expertise exists across various cultures and communities. Organizations handpick experts for projects that require specific cultural knowledge. That’s strategic hiring. That’s smart business.

And companies with diverse executive teams are 36% more likely to outperform financially2. DEI hires are cultural experts. We are experts in our specific demographic groups, regions and communities.

Look at the NFL and Roc Nation. What are the demographics of NFL athletes? Black, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander players make up a huge portion of the league. So of course the viewership is diverse. Jay Z and Roc Nation understands that culture and that audience. The NFL is strategically partnering with someone who has the expertise they need, they’re not giving him a handout.

DEI is market knowledge. DEI is understanding your customers, your community, and your audience.

case study: the wayans brothers, nfl, and the super bowl halftime show

If anyone calls Jay Z a “DEI hire,” they’re forgetting a huge part of history. In 1992, the Super Bowl halftime show was pretty much just a bathroom break. Marching bands. Ice skating. Performances designed for 100,000 people in a stadium, not for TV viewers at home.

But the Wayans brothers forced the NFL’s hand just like Jay Z did.

Keenen Ivory Wayans and In Living Color aired a live special on during halftime. They literally threw a halftime party. They pulled 20 million viewers away from the game. The show was loud, brilliant, unmistakably Black and the audiences loved it. The NFL panicked.

The next year, they booked Michael Jackson. Then Prince. Then Madonna. Then Beyonce. Every modern halftime show you’ve ever loved? That format was created by Black culture because it proved it could compete and win.

20 million viewers chose In Living Color, a Black comedy show, over ice skating. 135 million viewers chose Bad Bunny over Kid Rock’s 6.1 million. They didn’t choose DEI as a handout, they chose it because they were FORCED to compete. When Black culture proved to be more compelling, they had no choice to adapt.

So is Jay Z really a DEI hire or is he just continuing a legacy that Black people built? Because the Wayans forced the NFL to understand cultural relevance and Jay Z is just executing on that understanding. Every criticism of “DEI” ignores the fact that Black culture SAVED the halftime show. Without the Wayans, we’d still be watching marching bands.

my story as a “dei hire”

I, myself, am a “DEI hire.” I’m the youngest engineer on my team and the only Black woman engineer. Well actually, I’m the only woman engineer. The only other woman on the team is my manager.

And you know what? I was the most experienced and qualified person for the open role at my age and career stage.

When I graduated with my computer science degree, my student CV was too impressive for any company in demand for my technical skills to ignore or reject.

But let me say, my student CV was impressive because I worked to make it impressive. Companies didn’t just like my qualifications, they were inspired by my background story. They saw value in my perspective, my resilience, my ability to show up and get the work done despite adversity.

They were simply recognizing talent.

When I was entering my sophomore year of university, I posted a video on TikTok about my internship as an electrical software engineer, and someone called me a diversity hire in the comments. LOL. It got a few likes. And I’m not gonna lie, it rubbed me the wrong way. I tried brushing it off but, then the next day I woke up to a notification that someone commented a monkey emoji on another post.

That’s when the message became clear: you don’t belong here.

I stepped back from #TechTok content after that. The trolling hurt because it dismissed everything I’d worked for.

When people talk negatively about DEI hires, they often think it only means race. But being a woman in engineering is also considered DEI. Being the veteran who understands military culture is DEI. Being the multilingual employee who can serve in Hispanic and Spanish-speaking communities is DEI. Being the first-generation college grad who understands working-class customers is DEI. Being a Gen Z employee who understands social media and digital marketing is DEI. It’s about bringing perspectives and expertise that strengthen the entire organization.

DEI is good.

“diversity is not just about color or race”

Speaking from experience, being a woman in most corporate spaces is also considered a form of DEI, regardless of race or ethnicity.

I once spent a few months volunteering at a predominantly white high school in Arizona while working and studying full-time in college. I was assisting an AP Computer Science teacher in weekly coding activities with his students. The teacher of the classroom, an older white male, pulled me aside one day and informed me that one of his (three) female students requested tutoring lessons from me because she preferred my teaching style over his.

Mind you, I was just a sophomore in college at the time. I was only volunteering there for participation credit. Teaching children in public school education had never been a career interest of mine. I was just getting involved in the community as all college advisors suggest to future grad school applicants. So it’s needless to say, I was caught off guard.

The blonde-haired, fair-skinned high school cheerleader who always arrived to class with a fashionably trendy outfit asked her parents and her teacher if I could provide her tutoring lessons in Java.

Turns out the girl needed some guidance. Fast forward to our first tutoring session, she had told me how much I inspired her to improve her coding-programming skills, and that her post-high-school plan is to also pursue a STEM major at university.

She didn’t know if it was possible for her to succeed in both cheerleading and STEM during college, so I told her of my campus experiences and all of the many extracurriculars I had participated in (including pledging for a sorority) to encourage her to believe her dreams were both possible and manageable.

In that moment, I experienced what Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights advocate, calls the intersectionality of identities. I wasn’t chosen despite being a Black woman, I was chosen BECAUSE being a woman in computer science mattered more to her than our racial difference.

She saw herself in me. Not in my skin color, but in gender navigating a field where we’re both minorities. In a classroom filled with boys, she found another woman who had figured out how to succeed in code.

That’s the beauty of intersectionality that often gets overlooked. Sometimes in one shared axis of oppression like gender in STEM, there is solidarity that transcends another axis like race.

Representation isn’t always about someone who looks exactly like you. Sometimes it’s about someone who understands one crucial part of your struggle. She needed to see a woman succeed in computer science. I happened to be that woman.

And here’s what’s sociologically fascinating: in that affluent, 84% white neighborhood, a white girl chose a Black woman as her role model. Not because of some mandated diversity quota. Not because anyone told her to. But because she recognized something in me that she needed. Expertise, yes, but also the lived experience of being a woman in a spaces that wasn’t designed for us and fields that try to tell us we don’t belong.

That’s intersectionality. Multiple identities operating simultaneously, with different ones becoming salient in different contexts. That’s why DEI matters. Because oppression and marginalization operate on multiple axes, and sometimes the axis that matters most in a given moment isn’t the one people expect.

the real problem is erasure and disrespect

People who complain about DEI initiatives don’t understand other cultures. They don’t see what makes other cultures valuable. Then when their views and sales and stocks go down, suddenly they scramble for “media sensitivity training” and “rebranding” to get us back.

If you don’t want ethnic people working for you, expect ethnic people won’t come around. We like to be in places where we feel safe, appreciated, and respected.

We may be different from the majority, we’re aware. Our food may smell strong. Our spices might be intense. Our hairstyle might be a big fro on Friday and freshly parted knotless box braids on Monday. But we are only operating and living authentically in our bodies the best way we know how: the way our ancestors taught us for the past hundreds of years.

This isn’t a current problem I face, however, I’ve worked in places where, on multiple occasions, I wondered if my ethnic identity was shining through too much. Then I had to check myself and realize: “Well I’m not protesting. I’m not disturbing the peace. And actually, I’m not doing enough.” I shifted my perspective and suddenly stopped caring.

For example, a few weeks ago, I wore my “Black Excellence Engineered” hoodie to go shopping for wearable smart rings. Turns out, it just so happened to be MLK Day. I got a few stares. Whether or not the stares were of malice, I knew I was doing something right.

culture belongs in the workplace

It’s important to remember that it’s never taboo to talk about culture at work. That’s actually what gets people coming back. Because we all have our own culture whether you agree or not.

Imagine being in the kitchenette at work the day after the Super Bowl halftime performance. You’re immersed in a multicultural conversation with your coworkers about various languages, traditions, music genres. You’re learning about where your coworkers’ were born, the countries they’re ancestrally-originally from, and their favorite things about their respective cultures. Imagine all the foods you have yet to try and places you have yet to travel to. Imagine the gate-kept cultural experiences you could be introduced to if you just were open to meeting and connecting with people from across the globe.

The only “white” I grew up around were Albanians in the Bronx and high school was the first time I truly understood there were different types of “white.” Not all fair-skinned people are U.S. Americans. Not all U.S. Americans are monolingual. The entire world is melting pot.

After visiting several countries across Central America, Northern Africa, Europe and the Middle East, I can confidently say that white U.S. Americans like Kid Rock don’t seem to understand that knowing one language is not a flex even if it is English. Being a colorist is not a flex. Being xenophobic and racist is not a flex.

Anyone who is truly well-traveled would not be complaining about DEI. And that applies to all celebrities, influencers and public figures alike — including Kid Rock. I don’t care what music he’s released in the past, no one is above that statement. If you were truly well-traveled, well-rounded, or well-educated, you would NOT be complaining about DEI (or the NFL halftime show performed in Spanish but that’s another conversation for another time 😊).

personality hires vs. diversity hires

A diversity hire would bring bilingual skills that open new markets, cultural knowledge that prevents costly mistakes, different problem-solving approaches that drive innovation, and connections to communities the company wants to reach. A personality hire, on the other hand, will bring you good vibes, social lubrication, and happy hours. They make meetings more pleasant.

The difference between the two is that diversity hire is held to higher standards. They need to qualified AND diverse. A personality hire just needs to be likeable.

Despite this, companies are still hiring for personality. The research proves it. Extraverted, conscientious, open people earn more. A fun personality is not a crime. But the problem is: when a white person displays these traits, they’re called a “go-getter” or “culture fit.” When a Black person displays them, they’re a DEI hire.

The personality hire vs. diversity hire is just racism with extra steps. Both involve hiring for qualities beyond pure technical skill. But only one gets celebrated.

So before you call Jay Z a DEI hire, remember that Jay Z built a multi-billion dollar company, managed top artists and delivered over 135 million viewers for the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, Kid Rock’s personality hire performance drew 6.1 million viewers and was pre-recorded.

Tell me again who’s unqualified.

To all ethnic people, people of color and of minority groups, if you’re in the early stages of navigating corporate spaces: You belong here. If you’re a professional already in these spaces: Be proud. We all deserve to take up space and bring our whole selves to work.

Author’s Note: If my last article resonated with you (the one about people who are studying you rather than being your friend), I want you to pause before you start severing ties with everyone in your contact list and cutting everyone off. Not every person in your life needs to be, or should be, your ride-or-die. And that doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you, or them.

Some friendships are meant to be close. Some are meant to be seasonal. Some are meant to serve a very specific purpose and nothing more. And that’s not a failure. It’s actually healthy.

This piece is about understanding why certain friendships feel the way they do, and how clarity can replace resentment.

Aristotle’s Theory of Friendships

In books VIII and IX of the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle dedicates more attention to friendships than almost any other topic, more than courage, more than temperance, even more than justice.

He considered friendship essential to living a good life, arguing that “no one would choose to live without friends, even if he had all other goods” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1155a5-6).

Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle identified three distinct types of friendship, each serving a different purpose in our lives. His framework wasn’t about enforcing strict rules or judgments, he just simply observed that friendships form for different reasons and function according to different logistics.

Understanding these distinctions can help us stop feeling betrayed by people who were never meant to be our closest friends, stop overextending ourselves for relationships that were only meant to be seasonal, and recognize and cherish the friendships that actually matter.

Friendships of Utility

Aristotle describes these as relationships based on mutual benefit. These are your transactional friends.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, he writes that these friends “do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other.” Most of your friendships fall into this category.

Your coworker who you always grab lunch with. You both need someone to vent to about work, someone to split appetizers with, someone who makes the workday less overwhelming. Your gym buddy who keeps you accountable and motivates you to show up. Your study partners who help you pass difficult courses. The parents you connect with at the playground who understand the daily challenges of raising young children. They’ll be the ones to understand why you’re ordering wine at 4 PM. Your networking contacts, your industry connections, the people you meet at conferences or on LinkedIn. All utility.

We live in a culture that treats all friendships as though they should be permanent and equally intimate. We’re collecting friends like Pokémon cards, while social media reinforces this illusion that a real friend would stay in touch, would still care, would still show up. This is what ultimately leads us to feeling guilty when they don’t all last forever.

But Aristotle recognized that utility friendships are inherently temporary.

“When the motive of the friendship is done away, the friendship is dissolved.”

That coworker you got drinks with every Friday? You leave the company, and suddenly you realize you have nothing in common. That’s not betrayal. That’s a friendship of utility that ran its natural course.

Those college friends who were your whole world during finals week? Graduation hits, you move to different cities, and the group chat goes quiet. You didn’t fail at friendship. The utility ended.

The problem isn’t that these friendships exist; it’s that we misidentify them as something deeper and then feel hurt when they don’t transcend their original context.

Social media has sold us this lie that if you’re not posting about someone, traveling with them, or including them in your “day in the life” vlogs, they’re not really your friend. So we maintain these utility friendships past their expiration date, pretending we’re closer than we are, feeling exhausted by the performance of it all.

You don’t owe your coworker from three jobs ago a place in your wedding party just because you were close back then. You don’t need to keep texting your old roommate if the only thing you had in common was sharing a kitchen. You don’t have to maintain a friendship with everyone who was once useful to you.

Friendships of Pleasure

Aristotle describes these as relationships based on mutual enjoyment. These are the fun friends who won’t go to therapy with you.

In other words, these friends love each other not because of what each is, but because of what each offers that is “pleasant.” You’re friends because being together brings joy.

Your concert buddies who you only see when your favorite artist comes to town. Brunch friends who you love catching up with over mimosas. Gaming friends who you talk to for hours on Discord but have never discussed anything serious. Travel buddies who are down for spontaneous trips but disappear when life gets heavy. Party friends who light up every room but wouldn’t know how to handle you crying. Hobby friends such as the people in your book club, running club, or hiking group.

We’ve been taught that real friendship requires depth. That if someone can’t hold space for your triggers and sit with you in your darkness and know your family trauma and help you unpack your childhood wounds, they’re not a real friend.

That’s therapy culture bleeding into friendship culture, and it’s exhausting everyone.

Not every friend needs to be your therapist. Not every friend needs to know about your abandonment issues or why you struggle with intimacy or how your mother’s comments still echo in your head. Some friends are just supposed to make you laugh.

Aristotle observed that pleasure friendships are conditional, but the condition is different from utility friendships: they last as long as they provide pleasure to each other.

The moment you consistently bring heaviness into a pleasure friendship, you’ll often find the other person doesn’t have the capacity for it. This isn’t malice, it’s simply outside the parameters of what the friendship was built to handle.

You’re going through a breakup, and your brunch friend keeps changing the subject when you try to talk about it. She’s not a bad person. She’s just operating in a pleasure framework. She doesn’t know how to handle your pain because that’s not what your friendship was built on. Your gaming buddy is the best at making you laugh but goes MIA when you text about your anxiety. He’s not ghosting you because he doesn’t care. He’s out of his depth. Your friendship exists in a specific context: fun. Outside of that, he doesn’t know how to show up.

Your travel friends post pictures of their trip to Greece but didn’t check on you when your dad was in the hospital. It stings, right? But they’re not close friends who abandoned you, they’re pleasure friends who don’t understand that your relationship could extend deeper beyond planning the next adventure.

And social media can make pleasure friendships look like deep friendships. You see the beach trips and the birthday dinners and the matching Halloween costumes, and you think, “Wow, they’re so close.” But what you’re seeing is the highlight reel of a pleasure friendship.

Behind the scenes? They might not know each other’s middle names. They might never have had a serious conversation. They might not even text between hangouts. But the aesthetic of their friendship reads as intimacy.

This is why so many people feel lonely even though they’re “always out with friends.” You’re collecting pleasure friendships and wondering why none of them feel substantial. Because they’re not designed to be substantial. They’re designed to be fun.

Before you dismiss these friends, let me remind you: these friendships serve an important function. They remind us that life includes joy, not just survival and self-improvement. They connect us to our interests and help us remember what we enjoy. Aristotle didn’t consider these friendships as shallow, he just recognized them as distinct from friendships built on deeper foundations. And sometimes the friend who texts you memes at 2 AM is exactly the friend you need.

Friendships of Virtue

Aristotle calls these “perfect friendships,” the rarest and most valuable form. These are the friendships that are worth everything.

These friendships are based on mutual respect, shared values, and genuine love for who the other person is, not what they provide or who much fun they are. Importantly, Aristotle emphasize that these friendships take time to develop.

“…such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’.”

In other words, bonds require shared history, tested trust, and sustained presence through different seasons of life.

These are friends who know your full story and love you not despite it, but because they genuinely love you. They call you out when necessary. They show up when it’s inconvenient. They celebrate your successes without envy and support you through failures without judgment. They challenge your thinking while respecting your autonomy.

Aristotle was beautifully explicit about the rarity of virtue friendships. He makes it clear that most people will have very few of these friendships in a lifetime, if any. They require time, reciprocal investment, vulnerability, aligned values, and mutual commitment to growth. You cannot manufacture or accelerate this kind of bond.

It takes years of showing up consistently, seeing each other in different seasons, weathering conflicts and misunderstandings and life changes together. The key to virtue friendships is to let someone see you. And I mean, really see you. Not just the Instagram version or the work version or the first friend-date version. The messy, complicated, sometimes ugly truth of who you are.

In addition, both people have to be equally invested. If one person is doing all the emotional labor or all the reaching out or all the truth-telling, it’s not a friendship of virtue, it’s codependency.

You don’t have to agree on everything, but you have to share fundamental values about what makes a good life, what matters, how to treat people. Understand that both people have to be committed to becoming better humans. If one person is stagnant or defensive or unwilling to self-reflect, the friendship can’t deepen.

Aristotle understood what some of us struggle accepting: the majority of your friendships will be based on utility or pleasure. It’s just the human nature of socialization.

The deepest disappointments come from expecting one type of friendship to function as another. You assume your college roommate is a virtue friendship because of daily proximity and shared experiences, but after graduation the bond doesn’t survive the distance. That friendship was primarily utility. You believe your party friends are virtue friends because you’ve shared so many memorable nights together, but when you face real difficulty and they can’t show up, you realize the friendship was built on pleasure.

These aren’t betrayals. They’re mismatched expectations. You were asking a friendship to be something it was never structured to become.

Aristotle notes that in virtue friendships, one “wishes good to [their] friend for his sake, his friend must remain the sort of being he is, whatever that may be.” There’s no performance, no calculation. You’re fully known and loved for your character, not solely for what you offer as entertainment.

What This Means For Your Friendship Audit

Ready for your friendship audit?

Recognize the distinctions. Most of your friendships may be utility or pleasure-based. This is normal and healthy. Aristotle didn’t view them as inferior, but he simply understood they serve different purposes.

Adjust your expectations accordingly. If someone treats your friendship as utility while you’re treating it as virtue, that misalignment will cause pain. Trust me, I’ve been there. Either recalibrate your expectations or have an honest conversation with them about what the relationship actually is. I’ve done this myself, trusting someone enough to be vulnerable about my disappointment in our friendship’s lack of depth… only to find that nothing changed. It’s safe to say, we no longer speak.

Allow seasonal friendships to end naturally. Some people are meant for a specific chapter of your life. The coworker who made your job bearable doesn’t need to become a lifelong friend, unless you mutually want that dynamic. The gym partner who helped you through a difficult season served an important purpose, and that itself is already sufficient enough.

Protect the gems. If you have even one or two friendships of virtue, you’re fortunate. These require consistent investment, time, honesty, vulnerability, and the willingness to work through conflict rather than walking away at the first disappointment.

Be the kind of friend you hope to have. Virtue friendships require both parties to be committed to growth and willing to show up consistently. If you want these friendships, you must be capable of offering what they require.

Final Thoughts

Aristotle’s framework isn’t just ancient philosophy, it’s a survival guide for modern friendship. It gives us language for something we’ve all felt but couldn’t name: that not all friendships are the same, and they’re not supposed to be.

Aristotle didn’t rank these friendships, he just categorized them. He didn’t say utility and pleasure friendships are bad. He just said they’re different. They serve different purposes. They have different lifespans.

We live in a time that tells us to cut off anyone who doesn’t serve our highest good, to protect our peace at all costs, to expect everyone to show up or get out.

All of these friendships have value. All of them serve a purpose. All of them make life more bearable and beautiful in their own way.

So before you end a friendship because someone “didn’t show up,” consider what kind of friendship you’re actually in. Your coworker who didn’t come o your birthday party might have always been a utility friend. Your brunch friend who can’t handle emotional depth might be a pleasure friend. They’re simply different types of relationships.

But that friend who knows your whole story and loves you anyway? The one who challenges you to grow and shows up even when it costs them something? Hold onto them. Because as Aristotle understood, friendships of virtue are the rarest and most valuable relationships we’ll experience in our lives. These are the ones that define our lives. These are the ones you’ll remember on your deathbed. These are the ones that make you a better human.

And remember, you’re surrounded by normal, flawed humans who are showing up in the ways they know how, within the contexts that brought you together, for the purpose that makes the most sense.

Aristotle figured this out 2,300 years ago and maybe it’s time we finally listened.

Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment. Who in your life are you disappointed in right now, and why?

Further Reading

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W.D. Ross. Books VIII-IX. MIT Internet Classics Archive.

The Gigi Diaries

A literary publication exploring anthropology, ethnography, and intersectionality across digital spaces through the lens of a modern Afro-Indigenous Garifuna-American woman.

By Genesis Benedith

There’s a difference between being inspired by someone and studying them. One is admiration while the other feels like surveillance. And too often, I’ve found myself in friendships that weren’t built on connection, but instead on research.

I’ve heard the narrative constantly on TikTok recently: “Surround yourself with people who inspire you. Be friends with the people you look up to.” And I’d like to unpack this so we can really be honest with ourselves.

What if the person you are inspired by isn’t inspired by you?

What if I don’t look up to the person who looks up to me?

Would we even be able to recognize admiration transforming into obsession? Friendship into profit? Performance for proximity?

Where are we drawing the line?

Look, I have mutual, reciprocal friendships so that’s why I feel inclined to call out this behavior when I see it.

Some peers would get close to you, not because y’all had genuine chemistry, but because they wanted to know where you shopped, how you styled your hair, how you could afford what you brought to class or what you posted on social media. They weren’t befriending you, they were researching you.

And, unfortunately, this can happen in high school, college or adulthood.

What do we define as friendship? What is the foundation that we are building our friendships on? The new set I purchased from Alo Yoga? The “slayyyy queen” comments under my posts?

Because if the foundation is just me teaching you my lipstick combo in the ladies’ restroom and lending you my hair claw clips, then this isn’t friendship.

When I hear this narrative of “befriend people you admire,” I worry it creates friendships built on compliments, performance, and proximity. I worry it produces surface-level bonds that confuse access with intimacy instead of teaching us what genuine friendship is really supposed to feel like.

The Psychology Behind One-Sided Relationships

What many people don’t realize is that this dynamic has a name in psychology: parasocial relationships. Originally studied in the context of celebrities and media figures, parasocial relationships are one-sided connections where someone feels intimately connected to a person who doesn’t reciprocate that feeling. Research published in Scientific Reports found that these relationships can be psychologically powerful, influencing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways that mirror actual two-sided friendships, but except they’re not mutual.

The problem intensifies when this dynamic shows up in real-life friendships. According to MIT Media Lab research, while most people assume friendships are two-way, only about half of friendships are actually reciprocal. When someone approaches you because they admire you, they’re not building a friendship, they’re creating a parasocial dynamic with someone who’s physically accessible.

Okay, what’s the harm in wanting to be close to people with likeminded views?

Nothing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with befriending those with similar lifestyles, interests, values, preferences, and morals as you.

The real danger is that, in some cases, it fosters transactional friendships where one person is giving access while the other is only taking notes. And when the exchange is unbalanced like that, it almost always becomes one-sided. Someone walks away drained, while the other walks away with free game.

If someone tries to get close to me on an intimate level because they “look up” to me, it tells me one thing and one thing only. You’re looking for a mentor, not a friend.

The Real Problem With Proximity Friendships

When we normalize this idea of befriending the people we admire, we don’t talk about what it feels like on the other side.

You want to be friends with them but what if they don’t want to be friends with you?

What if your presence feels more like extraction than relationship?

What if all you’re offering is performance and not reciprocity?

Mentorship is one thing. Coaching is another. Friendship is neither, lol.

A friend is someone I can relate to, laugh with, feel at ease around. Not someone keeping mental notes on every move I make like I’m a case study or worse, their personal Pinterest board.

Real Friendship Requires Reciprocity

Research consistently shows that lasting friendships are built on specific foundations (and aspiration isn’t one of them). Studies on friendship formation identify five core factors that create genuine connection: reciprocal candor, mutual interests, personableness, similarity, and physical attraction. Notice what’s missing? A power imbalance. A hierarchy. One person studying the other.

Psychological research on affiliation and friendship emphasizes that close friendships evolve from exchange relationships to communal relationships. In a communal relationship, partners see their friendship as a common investment and contribute to it for their mutual benefit, not because one person is extracting knowledge, style tips, or social capital from the other.

According to research published in Frontiers in Psychology, symmetrical reciprocity—genuine mutual acceptance and mutual regard—is what distinguishes friends from non-friends. This mutual orientation produces the intimacy and closeness that makes friendship meaningful. When you’re approaching someone because you want to learn from them rather than connect with them, you’ve already violated that core principle.

The Social Media Amplification Problem

And social media has made this phenomenon worse. Now people can study you from your Instagram stories, your LinkedIn posts, your Substack. They can learn your coffee order, your workout routine, and your career moves and then approach you acting like they “get” you when really, they’ve just been taking notes.

Research on social media influencers shows how parasocial relationships develop in the digital space, with followers developing “friendships” that feel real to them but remain fundamentally one-sided. The influencer can’t possibly reciprocate connections with thousands of followers, yet followers feel as though they know the influencer intimately.

The same dynamic happens in everyday life when someone studies your social media presence and then tries to befriend you. They arrive with a false sense of familiarity, a manufactured connection based on observation rather than actual interaction.

You know this dynamic if you’ve ever had a “friend” who only texts you when they need advice, who only wants to hang out to “pick your brain,” who remembers every detail about your success but somehow forgets your birthday. That’s not friendship. That’s networking with a smile.

Why This Creates Fake Friendships

When you become friends with someone just to learn from them, the relationship becomes transactional. You’re there for access, not authenticity. You’re studying them, not relating to them. You’re trying to replicate them, not contribute to them.

And the result? Jealousy. Resentment.

Yes, “friends” can end up resenting you. Why?

Because no matter how many notes they take, they will never have the exact same come-up story as you. They will never have the same timing for opportunities as you. They will never have the same path in life as you.

Trying to “become” someone else is a dead end and it just kills the chance of a real friendship before it even begins.

Debunking the “Your Closest Five People” Defense

And yes, I know, “you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” I get it. Ambition matters.

But that quote is about peers pushing each other forward, not about befriending people you’re trying to become. There’s a difference between surrounding yourself with driven people and surrounding yourself with people you’re treating like case studies.

Real friendship comes from mutual curiosity, not one-sided admiration. It’s built when two people meet as equals, each bringing something different to the table. You don’t need to be inspired by someone to be their friend; you need to be seen by them, and see them in return.

Where To Draw The Line

I’m not against mentoring. I’ve had incredible mentors and mentees, professionally and academically. But those are clear relationships, with clear boundaries. I don’t blur those lines with friendship, no matter how much I admire them. My mentor is not my bestie, and my bestie is not my mentee.

If you admire someone, that’s fine. Ask them where their jeans are from, and they’ll probably tell you. But don’t get close to them because you want to be them. Don’t pretend it’s friendship when what you really want is free clout, free coaching, or free mentorship. It’s just weird and in-genuine.

Because, personally, if I’m your friend, I want a mutual dynamic. I want an exchange. I want someone who adds to my life, as I add to theirs, not someone who just extracts from it.

And let’s face it: sometimes, we just don’t want to be friends with someone. I don’t care if that defies the rules of being a “girls girl.”

The Entire Point

Friendship isn’t about studying each other. It’s not about performance, proximity, or access. It’s about connection. And if all you want from someone is the blueprint to their life, then you’re not friends... you’re just doing field research.

There’s a specific feeling when someone is extracting from you rather than connecting with you. They ask questions that feel like interviews. They compliment you in ways that feel like they’re reverse-engineering your life. They remember details about you the way a journalist remembers quotes, and they do it for reference, not for relationship.

So, please please please, retire the advice of: “Be friends with people you look up to.” It sounds cute, but in practice, it’s exploitative. Admire from afar. Learn from what people share publicly. But don’t mistake mentorship for friendship, and don’t confuse access with intimacy.

Because I don’t want to be friends with someone who is studying me.

References & Further Reading

• Scientific Reports: People perceive parasocial relationships to be effective at fulfilling emotional needs

• MIT Media Lab: Friendship Reciprocity and Behavioral Change

• Psychology of affiliation and friendship research (EBSCO)

• Friendship chemistry: An examination of underlying factors (PMC)

• The Interplay Between Adolescents’ Friendships and the Exchange of Help (PMC)

• Social media influencers and parasocial relationships (Nature)

In 2011, Cyberbully starring Emily Osment premiered to a generation of Millennials and elder Gen Z who didn’t need convincing that the horrors depicted on screen were real. We were living them. On Myspace. On Facebook. On Tumblr.

The film wasn’t melodrama, it was documentation. It was a mirror held up to the emerging digital brutality that would only grow with each new platform, each new iteration of social media, and each new dopamine-driven algorithm designed to keep us scrolling, engaging, and yes, attacking.

Amanda Todd and the Internet We Inherited

The following year, in 2012, Amanda Todd would become the face of what happens when online cruelty meets relentless surveillance. A Canadian teenager, she was sextorted, cyberbullied, and stalked across multiple platforms until she took her own life at fifteen.

Her story circulated on Tumblr like wildfire. Tumblr was a strange, dark corner of the internet where graphic content lived freely, where self-harm aesthetics mingled with the “scene kid” culture. With a platform like Tumblr, you didn’t need the dark web because Tumblr was the dark web.

Amanda’s death should have been a watershed moment but instead, it became content. Tragedy as spectacle. Grief as viral currency.

Over a decade later, the platforms have changed with the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. But the machinery of cruelty remains the same. If anything, it has become more sophisticated, more addictive, more psychologically weaponized.

And on December 10, 2025, Australia will become the first nation to implement a social media ban for anyone under 16, effectively acknowledging what we’ve known for years: these platforms are not safe spaces for developing minds. They are hunting grounds.

If you’re not familiar with my work, I write about intersectionality: Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how multiple social identities (such as race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) overlap and intersect to shape an individual’s experiences of discrimination and privilege.

So this essay is not just about cyberbullying. It’s about what happens when cyberbullying evolves into stalking. When stalking becomes gang stalking. And specifically, when a Black woman speaks up about her assault, only to find that her voice and her very existence is treated as provocation.

This is about what it means to be watched, hunted, and silenced in 2025, and why I refuse to be complicit in someone else’s attempt at my own erasure.

The Neuroscience of Cruelty

Let’s talk about dopamine for a moment. Because there is a science behind all of this.

Why Trolls Pile On Hate

People don’t just get validation from likes on their selfies anymore. They get high off likes on their comments.

Whether those comments are insightful, funny, relatable, or flat-out cruel, it doesn’t matter. What matters is the number. 300 likes. 6,000 likes. 12,000 likes. Each notification triggers a dopamine hit: a neuro-chemical reward that reinforces the behavior.

And here’s the dangerous part: it doesn’t matter if the comment is kind or vicious. If it gets engagement, the brain registers it as success.

This isn’t opinion. This is neuroscience. The human brain is wired for social conformity.

See a thousand people laughing at someone’s pain? Your brain will likely follow suit. It’s not conscious malice. It’s evolutionary survival instinct misfiring in a digital age. We are designed to align with the group, to avoid being cast out. But on social media, that instinct becomes weaponized. One person calls you stupid, and suddenly 5,000 people have co-signed the insult. The comment section becomes a coliseum, and you are the spectacle.

How Social Platforms Engineer Herd Behavior

This is why YouTube removed the public dislike count. Research showed that people weren’t disliking videos based on their own genuine opinions; they were disliking because they saw others doing it.

The herd mentality was manufactured. Cruelty became a bonding activity.

It became evident that the media platforms split into two camps: social networking for connection, and social media for consumption. Trolls, cyberbullies, and hate accounts exist in the latter.

For these people, your feelings are content. Your demise is content. Mockery is content. You think you’re posting an innocent video of your family, a day in your life, a moment of vulnerability, but to someone scrolling for their next dopamine hit, you’re just bait for their next snarky one-liner that might go viral.

Black Women & Digital Harassment

Before I detail my experience, let me be clear: this is not an isolated incident, and I am not overreacting. Research shows that posts about Black women online are disproportionately toxic.

• 20% of nearly one million posts about women were highly toxic, with Black women facing even more severe abuse than their non-Black counterparts (Medium).

• Black women journalists and politicians are 84% more likely than white women to be targeted by abusive tweets (Amnesty International).

• Black women do experience misogynoir on social media platforms, the intersection of racism and misogyny that specifically targets us, including hate speech, sexual harassment, and coordinated harassment campaigns (ACM Digital Library).

When I posted a TikTok video reading my essay “Success as a Black Woman Means You’re Always Being Watched,” over 100 comments flooded in from other Black women saying “me too.”

This isn’t just my story. This isn’t just research data. This is a systemic pattern of violence against Black women who dare to be visible, to succeed, to speak. The research validates my story, lived experiences corroborate it, and the digital evidence documents it.

Assaulted and Digitally Stalked In College

The university separated us. They put me in a hotel. Fair, since our other flatmates alienated me. My last two weeks studying abroad were hell. And when I returned to the United States, ready to move on, I discovered something chilling: she was still watching. My LinkedIn profile lit up at 2 a.m. with her name. Not Instagram, where anonymous lurking is easy. LinkedIn! The platform designed for transparency, where every view is logged, where surveillance is visible.

It was clear she wasn’t just jealous. She was obsessed with checking in on me, even after I reported her to our university for stalking my father’s public Instagram story.

So, traumatized me, forced to relive the distress, I wrote an essay about it. I called it “Success as a Black Woman Means You’re Always Being Watched.”

I wrote it the same day as the LinkedIn view, fueled by rage and clarity. I published it on Substack. I read it aloud to TikTok. It gained traction. A journalist wanted to republish it in their magazine.

But before I could even respond to the journalist, she reached out to them first. She doxxed herself. She outed herself as the stalker, tried to convince the journalist not to publish my story. The journalist didn’t care. She runs a women’s liberation magazine. This is her mission. To amplify voices like mine.

But the damage was done. My stalker had proven my point better than I ever could. I wrote about being watched. She exposed herself as the watcher.

When Stalking Becomes Gang Stalking

A Southern American creator, ShaytheThey, paints stalking perfectly: Stalking is usually someone you knew. Someone who had access to you. In movies, it’s the random stranger. In real life, it’s the person you once considered close. It’s someone you had to remove from your life due to their obsessive behaviors, only to discover that those behaviors were just the surface of a much deeper pathology.

What happens next is insidious.

After the journalist told me about her outreach, I woke up the next day to find that she had sent her sorority sister to gang stalk and cyberbully me. I have receipts too. Screenshots. Timestamps. I reported it to our current university, where we’re both enrolled. I reported it to the Study Abroad Office so they can add to the file. I reported it to the Dean of Students for misconduct. I reported it to the local police station for an Order of Protection. I had to build a RICO case to defend and advocate for myself.

Digital Footprint of Cyberbullying Campaigns

Disclaimer: All identifying details in the following screenshot were publicly visible at the time of capture. No private information has been revealed, and no individual is being targeted or encouraged to be contacted. The purpose of this image is to document a pattern of harassment, not to expose or endanger anyone.

These comments were not harmless or playful to me. They were taunts meant to belittle my trauma, mock my accomplishments in STEM, and minimize what I survived. The emojis, the sarcasm, the dismissal… Each one landed as a reminder that my pain was entertainment to them. I’m including this screenshot not to expose anyone, but to show proof how digital cruelty can compound real-world harm and silence survivors.

This screenshot is included not to encourage retaliation or exposure, but to illustrate the escalating nature of digital harassment, the minimization of my lived experience, and the ways in which online interactions can intersect with offline safety concerns. It serves solely as evidence of the behavior I reported through the appropriate institutional and legal channels.

And guess what? Authorities had to take my side. Because here’s what people don’t understand about stalking: no one takes it seriously until violence occurs.

Even when you go to law enforcement, you have to prove harm before you can get protection. You are your own first line of defense, and it’s deeply, crushingly lonely. Meanwhile, the stalker knows that people don’t hold them accountable the way they should, which is precisely why they continue. They are comfortable employing these behaviors because they’ve learned there are no real consequences.

Gang stalking adds a new dimension: the recruitment of others into the harassment. It’s no longer just one person. It’s an entire network. And when that network includes people with institutional power such as sorority connections, social capital, and the ability to mobilize others, the stalking becomes exponentially more dangerous.

I lost an entire season of my academic life to fear. A period I had planned to dedicate to a master’s degree became instead a battle to feel safe on campus, to feel safe anywhere. Terrified of being hunted. Terrified that speaking up would only make me a bigger target.

Because that’s actually what stalking is.

Digital or physical, being stalked means you’re being hunted.

The Paradox of Free Speech: Whose Voice Matters?

Here’s the thing about freedom of speech in America: I have it. This isn’t Spain anymore. No one can tell me I can’t talk about my lived experience. I’m not doxxing her. She doxxed herself by contacting the journalist. I’m not violating her privacy. She violated mine by stalking my LinkedIn, my family’s Instagram, and my digital footprint across multiple platforms.

And no one can convince me I’m being “dramatic.” No one can tell me I’m “playing the victim.”

At first, I was told to “just block her and move on.” But clearly blocking someone doesn’t prevent them from finding other ways to invade your digital space. Clearly, blocking someone doesn’t stop their friends from continuing the harassment. And blocking someone definitely doesn’t erase the trauma of being physically assaulted and then digitally hunted.

This is the paradox for Black women, particularly Black women with public accomplishments: Our achievements make us visible, and visibility makes us vulnerable.

We are told to excel, to break barriers, to be the “first” or the “only.” But when we do, we become targets. Not just for jealousy, but for obsessive surveillance. Our presence unsettles people who believe these spaces weren’t designed for us. And when we speak up about the harassment we face, we’re accused of being divisive, angry, or ungrateful.

I wrote my essay. I shared my story. And the person I wrote about confirmed every word by hunting me online and trying to silence me. She proved my thesis: success as a Black woman means you’re always being watched.

And when you’re watched long enough, the watchers convince themselves they have a right to your narrative, your space, your silence.

Australia’s Social Media Ban: A 21st Century Band-Aid?

On November 29, 2024, Australia passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, making it the first country in the world to raise the minimum age for social media use to 16. The law takes effect on December 10, 2025. It applies to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, X, Threads, and Kick. Platforms that fail to prevent underage users from creating accounts face fines up to $50 million AUD. There are no parental consent exceptions either. The government calls it a shield to protect children from “predatory algorithms.”

Supporters cite studies linking excessive social media use to anxiety, depression, and declining mental health among teens. Critics, including UNICEF Australia and the Human Rights Law Centre, argue that the ban is overly broad, undermines children’s rights to information and freedom of expression, and may do more harm than good by driving young people to less regulated corners of the internet.

YouTube has been particularly vocal in its opposition, calling the law “rushed” and warning that it could make children less safe by cutting them off from educational content and supportive online communities. The platform will archive underage accounts rather than delete them, allowing users to reactivate once they turn 16.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: this ban is a response to a problem that platforms created and then refused to fix. For over a decade, social media companies have prioritized engagement over safety, profit over protection. They’ve built algorithmically-driven ecosystems designed to maximize time on platform, knowing full well that those algorithms disproportionately amplify outrage, cruelty, and divisive content.

They’ve allowed cyberbullying, harassment, and stalking to flourish because moderation is expensive and controversy drives clicks.

Australia’s ban is an acknowledgment that self-regulation has failed. But it’s also a blunt instrument; a legislative hammer trying to fix a problem that requires surgical precision. The real issue isn’t access. It’s accountability.

Platforms should be held responsible for the harm they enable. Users should face consequences for harassment and cyberbullying. And society needs to invest in digital literacy and empathy training. We need to teach people, particularly young people, that there are real humans on the other side of the screen.

The Amanda Todd Parallel

Amanda Todd’s story should have changed everything. She was fifteen when she died by suicide in 2012, after years of sextortion, cyberbullying, and relentless online harassment. Her case became a global symbol of the dangers of unregulated social media. And yet, thirteen years later, the mechanisms that enabled her torment remain largely intact.

Tumblr, where Amanda’s story circulated like wildfire, was a lawless space. Graphic content, self-harm, violence, and explicit material, existed openly. It was the platform where you could find anything, where the boundaries between support community and harm enabler were dangerously blurred.

Eventually, Tumblr cracked down, banning adult content in 2018. But by then, the damage was done. The culture had migrated. The tactics had already evolved.

Today, TikTok and Instagram Reels serve as the new vectors for viral cruelty. The platforms have changed. The dopamine mechanics remain the same. And young people, particularly young girls and marginalized young people, continue to be the most vulnerable targets.

The Failure of Moderation and the Myth of Digital Citizenship

Moderation on social media platforms is, to put it bluntly, trash. I’ve reported hate comments, stalking accounts, harassment campaigns. The platforms respond with automated messages that amount to: “We can’t really do anything. Just block them.”

Block them. As if that solves the problem. As if blocking prevents someone from creating a new account. As if blocking stops their friends from continuing the harassment.

The accounts are faceless. Profile pictures are memes, screenshots of celebrities, AI-generated images. There’s no accountability because there’s no identity verification. How do you block an account with Adam Sandler’s face as the profile picture when you know it’s just one of dozens they can create?

Meanwhile, universities require students to go through Title IX training, sexual harassment prevention and consent workshops. But there’s no equivalent for digital spaces. No mandatory training on digital literacy, online empathy, or the consequences of cyberbullying. We’re thrown into the wolves and told to figure it out. “Fend for yourself. Good luck.”

Every freshman in America learns about harassment and boundaries in physical spaces, but we don’t teach them that the same principles apply online? We don’t teach them that words have consequences, that anonymity doesn’t erase harm, that a comment that gets 12,000 likes can destroy someone’s mental health or derail their career?

And platforms benefit from this chaos! Engagement is engagement, whether it’s positive or toxic. Conflict drives clicks. Outrage drives ad revenue. So they allow it to fester, because cleaning it up would hurt their bottom line.

On Being Hunted: The Mentality of the Stalked

When you’re being stalked, it changes your mentality. You’re no longer operating in the same reality as everyone else. You have the mindset of being hunted. Once you’ve been hunted before in life, you understand that anybody has the capability to be a hunter.

This is what people don’t understand. Stalking isn’t just the act of being followed or watched. It’s the psychological reorientation that comes with knowing someone is obsessively tracking your movements, your posts, your life.

You become hypervigilant. You second-guess every decision. You wonder if that new follower is real or if it’s them. You wonder if sharing a photo of your location will put you at risk. You wonder if speaking publicly about your experience will escalate the harassment.

And the isolation is profound. People don’t take stalking seriously until violence occurs. They tell you you’re overreacting. They tell you to ignore it. They turn it into entertainment, like, “Oh my god, that’s crazy, tell me more!” As if your trauma is a story for their amusement.

Law enforcement often can’t help until the stalker “actually harms you.” You have to wait to be hurt before you can be protected. You have to prove the threat is real before anyone will intervene. And by then, the psychological damage is done.

So you become your own protector. You change your behavior. You limit what you share online. You stop posting about your achievements because success is what made you a target in the first place. You practice defensive living, not because you’re paranoid, but because experience has taught you that vigilance is survival.

Why Am I Writing This Now?

Because look at Megan Thee Stallion.

Megan’s Case Proves the Pattern

On December 2, 2025 (literally this week) a federal jury in Miami ruled in Megan’s favor in her defamation lawsuit against blogger Milagro Gramz (Milagro Cooper), awarding her $59,000 in damages.

Megan accused Cooper of being a “mouthpiece,” a “puppet,” and a “paid surrogate” for Tory Lanez, the man convicted of shooting her in the foot in 2020 and currently serving a 10-year prison sentence. Cooper allegedly promoted a sexually explicit deepfake video of Megan by encouraging her nearly 100,000 followers to view it, creating what Megan described as a “coordinated campaign” to harass and discredit her for testifying against Lanez in his criminal trial.

On the witness stand, Megan sobbed as she testified about the emotional devastation:

“I know it’s not me, but to be in front of everybody else, and they have to watch it—it’s really embarrassing. To this day, I feel a little, like, defeated. Because no matter what, no matter if the video was fake or not… [Cooper] wanted it to be real.”

She revealed that the harassment pushed her to the brink. She required two five-week stays in therapy costing $240,000 each, lost $4-7 million in potential income, and became so depressed she contemplated suicide, “pushing me to the point where I didn’t feel like making music anymore.”

This is what gang stalking looks like at scale. This is what happens when a Black woman has the audacity to tell the truth about violence committed against her own body.

Megan was shot. She testified. And for that, she was subjected to years of coordinated digital abuse, deepfake pornography, defamation campaigns, and harassment designed to silence her, discredit her, destroy her career, and erase her humanity.

But she didn’t stay silent. She sued. She testified. She won. And now there’s legal precedent: promoting deepfakes and running coordinated harassment campaigns against Black women carries consequences.

Megan’s victory is not just hers, it’s ours. Every Black woman who has been stalked, harassed, gaslit, and told she’s overreacting can point to this case and say: See? It’s real. It’s documented. And it’s punishable. So when I say I’m not staying silent about my stalker, understand: I’m following Megan’s blueprint.

Speak. Document. Hold them accountable.

Addressing My Silence

I haven’t been writing much lately. I’ve had writer’s block for months. Part of it is fear: fear that speaking up will provoke more harassment, more stalking, more attempts to silence me. Part of it is exhaustion: exhaustion from having to defend my right to tell my own story, exhaustion from being treated like my victimization is up for debate.

But silence has a cost. Silence allows stalkers to believe their behavior goes unnoticed. Silence allows platforms to continue profiting from harassment. Silence allows society to ignore the systemic vulnerabilities that make Black women uniquely targeted.

Speaking Up Becomes the Only Defense

So I’m writing this now because I refuse to be complicit in my own erasure. I refuse to let the narrative be controlled by people who wanted to dim my light. I refuse to accept that success means silence.

I’m also writing this because I know I’m not alone. There are countless Black women, women of color, queer people, disabled people, and marginalized individuals who have experienced what I’ve experienced.

I am not the only one who has been stalked, harassed, cyberbullied, and then told they’re overreacting. I am not the only one who has been gaslit into questioning whether their fear is justified. And I’m certainly not the only one who has been isolated because no one takes their reports seriously until violence occurs.

This essay is for them. For us. For anyone who has ever felt hunted in digital spaces and been told to just “log off” as if that solves the systemic problem.

From Cyberbully to Now: Nothing Changed

Cyberbully (2011) was supposed to be a warning. Amanda Todd’s death was supposed to be a catalyst for change. Australia’s social media ban is supposed to be a protective measure. But none of these interventions address the root problem: cruelty has been algorithmically incentivized.

Social media platforms have built business models that profit from engagement, regardless of whether that engagement is positive or toxic.

They’ve created environments where cruelty becomes addictive when it’s rewarded with likes, shares, and visibility. They’ve enabled stalking by making surveillance easy and consequence-free. They’ve turned harassment into entertainment and trauma into content.

We Need More Than Moderation… We Need Accountability

Half-hearted content moderation policies are not enough. We need meaningful regulatory intervention and civil liability.

Until we hold platforms accountable, the cycle will continue. Until we invest in comprehensive digital literacy and empathy education, teaching people that there are real humans behind every profile, the harassment will persist. Until we take stalking seriously before violence occurs, victims will continue to be isolated and unprotected.

And until we acknowledge that success as women in leadership, media or STEM roles means being subjected to disproportionate scrutiny, jealousy, and surveillance, we will continue to be gaslit, dismissed, and told to stay silent.

It’s imperative we recognize that our achievements make us targets and our voices make us threats.

I’m done being silent.

Digital Violence Ends Now

To stalkers: people can literally see you. Every LinkedIn profile view. Every TikTok profile view. Every Instagram story view.

To the platforms: your moderation policies are failing. Your algorithms are weaponized. Your profit motive is endangering lives. Do better, or legislation will force you to.

To survivors: your story matters. Your fear is valid. Your voice deserves to be heard. You are not overreacting. You are not alone.

And to everyone else: if you’ve never watched Cyberbully (2011) with Emily Osment, watch it. Not because it’s a perfect film, but because it’s a mirror. A mirror that shows us what we’ve normalized, what we’ve enabled, and what we continue to ignore.

The Gigi Diaries

A literary publication exploring anthropology, ethnography, and intersectionality through the lens of an modern Afro-Indigenous American woman.

By gigi benedith

Works Referenced & Further Reading

Legislation & Policy

• Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024
  https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7284

• Human Rights Law Centre: Australia’s Social Media Ban for Under-16s—A Human Rights Perspective
  https://www.humanrights.unsw.edu.au/students/blogs/australia-social-media-ban-under-16s

• UNICEF Australia: Social Media Ban Explainer — Why Australia Is Raising the Age to 16
  https://www.unicef.org.au/unicef-youth/staying-safe-online/social-media-ban-explainer

• Free Malaysia Today: Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Offers Test on Social Media Harm
  https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/world/2025/12/01/australias-under-16-ban-offers-test-on-social-media-harm

Films & Case Studies

• Cyberbully (2011), dir. Charles Binamé
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1930315/

• CNN: Bullied Canadian Teen Leaves Behind Chilling YouTube Video — Amanda Todd (2012)
  https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/12/world/americas/canada-teen-bullying

Digital Behavior, Neuroscience & Social Conformity

• The Psychology Behind Why We Hate-Follow People on Social Media — The Independent
  https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/the-psychology-behind-why-we-hatefollow-people-on-social-media-b1837751.html

• “The Neuroscience of Social Conformity and Validation-Seeking Behavior in Digital Environments” — The Gigi Diaries
  https://thegigidiaries.substack.com/p/story-views-are-the-new-apartment

Misogynoir, Online Abuse & Harassment Research

• “The Digital Misogynoir Report: Online Abuse Against Black Women”
  https://medium.com/@glitchuk_/the-digital-misogynoir-report-online-abuse-against-black-women-allowed-and-enabled-to-thrive-25a1d82b82f1

• Amnesty International: “Online Violence Against Women”
  https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/technology/online-violence/

• ACM Digital Library: “Misogynoir in Digital Spaces & Coordinated Harassment Patterns”
  https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3491102.3517608

Essays & Personal Narratives

• “Success as a Black Woman Means You’re Always Being Watched”
  https://thegigidiaries.substack.com/p/success-as-a-black-woman-means-youre

Social Media, Stalking & Digital Vulnerability

• TikTok creator @shaythethey on stalking culture
  https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrPshpR3/

Legal Cases, Defamation & Deepfake Harassment

• NBC News: Megan Thee Stallion sobs while testifying about deepfake porn shared in alleged harassment campaign
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/megan-thee-stallion-sobs-testifying-deepfake-porn-florida-civil-trial-rcna245011

• Rolling Stone: Megan Thee Stallion Testifies About Emotional Damage from Deepfake Porn Promoted by Blogger
  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/megan-thee-stallion-testimony-deepfake-porn-tory-lanez-1235470329/

• NBC Miami: Jury deliberating in Megan Thee Stallion’s defamation lawsuit against online streamer
  https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/jury-deliberating-in-megan-thee-stallions-defamation-lawsuit-against-online-streamer/3726604/

Have you ever gotten really close to someone and considered them as your best friend but hesitated? Did you ever question if they considered you as their best friend?

If you said yes to either question, well… welcome to the club.

The realization that I may not be someone’s best friend became my starting point for thinking critically about how people define friendship.

What does it mean to be a low-maintenance friend? Is low-maintenance friendship as healthy as people claim? Or are there really two different kinds of low-maintenance friendships?

Because let’s face it, not all friendships are created equal. Some reflect maturity and trust. Others reflect detachment, neglect, or even opportunism.

It’s okay to have that awakening moment. It has less to do with hurt feelings and more to do with understanding the psychology of how we define, maintain, and sometimes neglect our own friendships.

Is the friendship low-maintenance or just no-maintenance?

We often romanticize low-maintenance friendships as the mark of adulthood. We feed into the idea that two busy, ambitious women can go months without speaking and still pick up where they left off. And yes, that version exists. It’s real, it’s valuable, it’s healthy and it works.

I have a 8-4 as an engineer and one of my good friends is a nurse who works 7-7. We respect each other if one of us wants to cancel plans due to burnout and we excitingly wait for the postponed hangout.

The idea is simple: we’re adults now, our schedules are busy, our lives are demanding, and sometimes we don’t have the time or energy to check-in every day. Then when we do reconnect, it’s as if nothing has changed. I believe it’s very important to hold grace for people navigating careers, families, and cross-country moves.

But there’s an eeriness from the celebration of the other kind of low-maintenance friendships. The one where “low-maintenance” becomes an excuse for detachment, neglect, or simply not checking in. The one that disguises emotional laziness as maturity. One where “low-maintenance” is just code for “I don’t really care enough to show up for you.”

This discussion is about that version.

So what does “low-maintenance” really mean?

The two kinds of low-maintenance friendships:

1. Healthy low-maintenance: Friends who reconnect after long silences with warmth and support.

2. Neglect disguised as low-maintenance: Friends who don’t show up, don’t respond, don’t engage, don’t check-in and don’t support, but still expect proximity benefits.

A healthy low-maintenance friendship signals trust. Psychology supports this secure attachment theory: the belief that even without constant contact, your bond is intact. You know this person has your back. They might not reply to your text right away, but if you really needed them, they’d show up.

But because not every “low-maintenance” relationship works that way, sometimes it may signal avoidance instead of trust. And sometimes it’s not about comfort, it’s about detachment.

The relational maintenance theory points out that strong friendships require reciprocity: emotional availability, responsiveness, and affirmation.

Even minimal gestures like returning a text, asking how you’re doing, or acknowledging your struggles signal care. When those behaviors disappear, the relationship stops being “low-maintenance” and starts being non-maintenance. And that’s where the frustration comes in.

The weight of the “best friend” label

Growing up, many of us threw around the phrase “best friend” with ease. On playgrounds, in middle school hallways, in dorm rooms… we named people our best friends as a way of cementing connection. But adulthood complicates this.

There’s a cultural weight behind calling someone your best friend now. Some avoid it altogether, fearing that the title implies exclusivity, permanence, or responsibility they don’t want to claim. This is textbook relational ambiguity: the choice to keep ties undefined in order to avoid accountability.

It’s safer to say, “Oh, we’re just friends.” No promises. No labels. No chance of disappointment when things inevitably shift.

But here’s the paradox: refusing to name friendships doesn’t actually protect us from disappointment. It just leaves the other person wondering where they stand.

Slow burn friendships

I remember investing time, energy, resources into a friendship that slowly burned to ashes.

She vented to me about another member of our peer group and complained how the other girl called her her “best friend.” She ranted about how the feeling wasn’t mutual and the friendship label made her uncomfortable.

I started to bottle up, trying to hide the concern in my eyes, wondering: Is this how she feels about me too? Are we not best friends?

Then she clarified: she didn’t want to be called anyone’s best friend.

Yup, that is how she feels about me too.

Hearing her express her disgust with the words “best friend” made me wonder if I invested too much in this friendship. God forbid another girl trusts you enough with that label.

The memories flooded in and took me for a loop. I asked myself: Am I really sharing clothes, having sleepovers, going grocery shopping, sharing study notes, attending parties and enrolling in classes with someone who wouldn’t even call me her “best friend” to others?

It felt like I was in a 2-year relationship with someone who refused to say “I love you.”

You’re not busy adulting, you’re just emotionally lazy

Friendship isn’t just measured in borrowed clothes or cramming for exams together. It’s measured in care. In showing up when life gets hard.

When I was struggling through harassment, breakups, and the stress of temporarily living in not only another country, but in another continent, I sent a “friend” a very, very long message about how overwhelmed I felt. In life, and in our friendship. What I wanted was simple: a virtual hug, an encouraging word, a FaceTime call, maybe even a suggestion to plan a night of cookies, movies, and reassurance when I returned home. Instead, I got indifference. I got a one-sentence reply. A casual “Sorry you’re going through so much.”

This is a classic tale of low emotional investment. Some people aren’t avoidant because they’re busy; they’re avoidant because closeness requires vulnerability, and vulnerability makes them uncomfortable.

And so, they don’t show up.

Performative and proximity-based friendships

College taught me how to spot someone who is social climbing and who is using proximity as convenience. I can vividly recall moments with some people where I realized: we’re not friends by choice, we’re friends by circumstance.

Scrolling through my Instagram followers and phone contacts, I find myself asking questions like: Are we really friends or are you just an opportunist? Are we really friends or are you just social climbing? Are we really friends or are you just studying me?

But that’s the thing about college: proximity-based friendships are common on an educational campus. You meet in class, you study together, you stick close because your schedules overlap. Relationships based on utility rather than emotional intimacy supports Aristotle’s theory of utility friendships.

Being the most knowledgable in the study group, the only one in the friend group with the professional connections, the one who had the luxury student housing, I realized that my wealth and success attracted instrumental friendships: friends for utility rather than intimacy.

Why best friends are hard to find

All of this points to a larger truth: it’s not just me. Best friends are harder to find in adulthood because the social expectations around friendship have changed.

In 2025, we’re more individualistic than ever. Career, self-optimization, and networking often replace the slow work of building intimacy. Female friendships, in particular, can be strained with comparison, competition, and caution… especially in academic or professional spaces where proximity blurs into performance.

Add to this rise of “performative friendship” on social media, where posting a birthday shoutout or dropping a heart emoji substitutes for real connection, and the gap between “bestie” and “college classmate” grows wider.

The point is:

Low-maintenance friendships can be beautiful when they’re grounded in trust. But when they’re used as excuses for neglect, avoidance, or detachment, they’re not really friendships at all. They’re arrangements.

The science is clear: human relationships thrive on reciprocity, emotional availability, and acknowledgment. The psychology is clear: withholding those things is a form of self-protection, but also a barrier to intimacy.

And my experience is clear: I’d rather have one friend who shows up than five who don’t.

So to the girl who never called me her best friend: thank you for teaching me what friendship isn’t.

And to Carmen, thank you for encouraging me through every phase, dilemma, and period of my life both when I needed it the most and when I didn’t need it at all. thank you for teaching what friendship is. In your words, I love you, bestie.

TLDR; Ultimately, real friendship requires care, vulnerability, and mutual investment… and that one dependable friend is worth more than five passive ones.

The “follow for follow” trains. The mirror selfies with three hundred comments that feel less like community and more like transactions. The pressure to drop a heart-eye emoji on her picture so she’ll remember to return the favor when it’s your turn. It’s exhausting, and it’s fake.

Half the time we don’t even like each other… we’re just trying to be “nice.” This is the new social etiquette.

But there’s another layer (and it’s thick): the lurkers. People who never speak, never engage, never say hi, but make sure to see everything. It’s like they’re standing outside your window at night, peeking in, but refusing to knock on the door.

Technology was built to connect us, but people have stripped the “social” out of social networking. These platforms were designed for engagement: to comment, to converse, to build networks across the digital spaces. Instead, many use them as voyeuristic windows, peeking into other people’s lives without ever knocking, waving, or saying a word.

A follow and a story view have been mistaken for actual social interaction, when really it’s not interaction at all. It’s passive consumption dressed up as connection.

Welcome to Lurk City, Population: Your followers

We all know them: the ghost followers, the lurkers, the ones who stick around in your digital orbit not to support you, but to keep tabs on you.

Lurkers are the new pedestrians. The feed is the sidewalk. Your story views become the apartment windows people can’t resist peeking into.

They’re tuned in every day, every hour, watching like clockwork but yet they’ll scroll right past your post, pretending not to see the very content they just viewed from your story window.

Just like Manhattan sidewalks or crowded subway cars, Instagram and TikTok are crowded digital avenues. People perform, glance, and pretend not to notice you… yet they’re always watching.

Social media forces us into constant visibility. In cities, you feel eyes on you in public; with social media, you see the receipts in your story views.

The sidewalks are crowded, but nobody’s saying hello

In psychology, there’s a concept called social loafing. “Social loafing” is the tendency to contribute less effort in groups because they assume their presence alone is participation. That’s what’s happening online.

On social media, lurking is the new loafing.

Story views have become the “silent attendance sheet.”

And watching without engaging is just the digital version of sitting in the back of the group project, nodding along while everyone else does the work.

A follow, a story view, a quiet orbit around someone’s page has been mistaken for support. But showing up silently isn’t the same as showing up fully.

Support is not supposed to look like surveillance.

When “support” looks like surveillance

When we hear the word voyeurism, we think of something clearly invasive… someone recording you without consent, peeking through your blinds, or hiding with binoculars. But online, voyeurism gets sticky because profiles are public, views are counted, and the boundaries are blurred.

What does it mean when you block someone (a digital door closed) yet they make a new account to sneak back in? Or when you use the new social media feature to “remove follower” (not block, just remove) and then you still see them pop up in your story views?

At that point, it’s not passive anymore. It’s intentional surveillance.

The apps give us tools to manage boundaries, but the behavior reveals something deeper about people: their compulsion to keep watching, even after being told “you don’t belong here.”

“Hate-following” and ghost lurking aren’t random quirks. Let’s call it what it really is: digital voyeurism.

The neuroscience of hate-following

“Hate-following” is the act of following someone on social media, or monitoring their content, despite disliking them or what they stand for.

The obsession with hate-following isn’t just social; it’s neurological. Neuroscience shows that our brains can’t always tell the difference between love and hate. Both activate overlapping regions, triggering dopamine and oxytocin.

Psychotherapist Sally Baker explains: “When we pay intense attention to a subject, it triggers the release of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine. The feel-good hormones are released when you are emotionally involved with someone — regardless of the motivation.”

When we see someone we envy, the same stimulants are triggered … not with joy, but with a twisted cocktail of reward and threat detection.

Hate-following offers this martini of cortisol spikes and dopamine hits topped with the satisfaction of confirming, “Yep, I still don’t like her”, and the schadenfreude of hoping she fails.

In other words: paying intense attention to someone, whether fueled by affection or resentment, still gives your brain a hit.

That’s why hate-following can feel compulsive. The act of checking, scrolling, and even mocking delivers micro-doses of reward.

Which means that lurking on a former friend’s feed and laughing in a group chat can literally feel as rewarding to the brain as checking in on someone you love. Both are emotional investments, but one just leaves a bad aftertaste.

Psychologists call this negative social comparison. The brain interprets it like survival data: “Where do I stand on the social hierarchy? Am I winning or losing?” It explains why people refresh stories, scroll through finstas, and keep peeking into lives they claim not to care about.

“I think when you don’t like someone, you want to keep reaffirming the reason why you don’t like them and social media is the perfect place to try to find those faults, even if they don’t exist”, says Ella, a 22-year-old from Manchester who admits to hate following a personal trainer from her town on Instagram.

— Stylist UK

Ella later admitted to screenshotting some of the influencer’s content and sending it to her group chat for amusement.

This is textbook negative social comparison. Ella doesn’t just watch… she’s actively scanning for proof that validates her dislike. But that’s the irony: in the act of “reaffirming,” she stays tethered to the very person she wants to reject. Her dislike isn’t severed by unfollowing, instead it’s reinforced by constant checking.

“It’s therapeutic while I’m doing it – my go-to procrastination activity,” said content creator Thomas Ling, 29. Ling confessed he hate-followed former friends and dislikes colleagues on his social media. “But I never feel good afterwards.”

That’s the neuroscience playing out in real time: dopamine during the act, shame afterwards. The brain tricks you into thinking it’s rewarding; the body reminds you it’s empty.

…Aleesha is addicted to hate following someone she used to be friends with. “It was a classic uni fallout where we both got hurt, but I still find myself on her Instagram, checking what she’s doing on LinkedIn and checking if she’s more successful than me.”

— Stylist UK

Here’s where media theory intersects with neuroscience. Aleesha’s behavior isn’t about connection; it’s about measurement. LinkedIn, Instagram, story views… she’s using them as tools for ranking herself against someone else’s highlight reel. It’s no longer social networking. It’s surveillance.

Whether it’s their fear of subliminals, envy of progress or obsession they won’t name out loud, together these stories echo the point: hate-following someone is less about the person being hate-followed, and more about the person doing the hate-following.

But it doesn’t matter because the moment someone reduces themselves to lurking in silence, they’ve already admitted they care more than they claim to. They’ve already lost.

If you don’t like them, why are you even there? While you’re busy keeping tabs, they’re busy living.

Lurking has replaced human connection

In scientific theory, lurking is just ambient awareness: the passive sense of someone’s life you gain just by watching from the sidelines.

Stories, likes, and algorithmic timelines make it possible to know someone’s daily rhythms without ever speaking to them. It’s the digital equivalent of overhearing a stranger’s conversations through your apartment walls.

And while the platforms designed this ambient awareness, people have turned it into something darker, something socially sinister: a replacement for real interaction.

Instead of engaging, we consume. Instead of connecting, we lurk.

Social media has become an apartment complex where everyone’s peeking through everyone else’s windows.

You’re not supporting when you watch every story and ignore every post. You’re surveilling.

It would be easy to put the blame on the engineers who built the platforms; however, it’s the fault of the consumers who choose too use it this way, not the digital architecture.

Boundaries in public vs. digital spaces

Just like choosing who gets to visit your apartment, you curate who gets access to your online space.

Removing a follower isn’t “petty”; it’s just kicking someone out of your lobby when they keep lurking around without saying a word.

Why is it that when you remove people from your online space, it gets treated like the brink of war?

If I wouldn’t let you lurk in my real window every night without engaging, why would I let you do it on Instagram? Digital boundaries are still boundaries.

Because in the end, hate-following doesn’t hurt them. It only drains you. Every silent view, every hidden check-in, every tab kept is proof of one thing: you cared. And in the economy of attention, that means you already lost.