limerence

after having gone thru it a few times now, i got some thoughts on how prolific twitter use affects especially early stages of dating. having this direct channel into a person's head, thoughts, actions, etc at all times isn't a thing in any other context. imo that changes a lot:

as someone who's both obsessed and been obsessed over, i think that extra info jacks up "limerence" to a huge degree. if ur seeing someone once or twice a week u can have some strong feelings about them, but it will always be tempered by distance and time and distraction

having them RIGHT THERE ON THE TL creates this complicated interplay between the parasocial and real actual relationship, u feel closer or more connected to someone bc of something they said that wasn't even actually to u

if someones checking and rechecking ur posts constantly they will care WAYYY more about u than some random dating app match. their mind will be filled up.

ofc u could say that they'd only be looking if they already cared, and in some sense that's very true, but having the *capability* to interact and see interactions with someone at any moment allows for small initial attractions to self reinforce and spiral to much larger ones

posting an insta story for someone to see ain't got nothing on making like 10 tweets and 50 replies in a day and knowing they'll see all of em

is all this a bad thing? not necessarily, there's a real sense in which it's just true that ur getting to know someone faster or even more authentically bc u have more exposure to them

but in another sense it is an artificial boost, an escalation that makes it harder to take space and reflect and let feelings calm down

an extra channel for connecting, but also for hurt feelings, miscommunications, insecurities and worries

anyway mainly i just gotta say posting shit publicly on the internet 24/7 is not fucking normal, those of us who do it are not normal people, and that really does end up affecting a huge amount of our interactions

primarily it makes it incredibly easy to obsess over people. it's one thing to think about somebody a lot and be waiting on their text back, but it's a whole different ballgame to see every tweet, every reply, every like, and be able to piece together all kinds of partial info