It’s the current world, and almost every young person’s routine includes some time allocated to scrolling through social media. By standard measures, Vicky, my girlfriend, was doing the normal thing. When I met her, her relationship with social media didn’t raise any red flags.

She was bubbly, talkative and generally good company. I’m a bit reserved, so I tend to like women who are more outgoing than I am. Our dates had the usual script, which includes taking snaps of our meals and drinks. Many people do that, so I didn’t make too much of it. Vicky was also younger than me, which made me feel like she probably did that because she was at that age.

It was one of those things that you don’t do, but you don’t give them much thought because they haven’t yet affected you negatively. Then it started.

“Babe, have you decided where we’re going for our date?” Vicky asked me.

“I liked the place we went to last time. I thought we could go back there,” I responded.

“But babe, I have already posted that place,” she said.

“How is that a problem?” I asked, puzzled.

“We should try out somewhere with a different aesthetic, plus they said doing the same thing makes people too comfortable in relationships,” replied Vicky.

“But we liked the place,” I argued.

“We’ve got to try out new things to keep things interesting,” she said.

She won. However, trying out new things also included trying out new food or food recommendations by influencers. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if the food wasn’t too expensive and inedible to her. I lost count of the number of times she dug into my plate because she’d ordered something that she couldn’t eat, just because it was trendy.

If there was something I learnt from Vicky, it was the names of social media content creators and new platforms that seemed to mushroom every other day. When she started coming over to my place, I quickly created an account for her for sites like YouTube and Netflix on the TV because I didn’t watch the kind of content she watched. The mix included reality TV and lifestyle content.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad. She also learnt a lot about cooking and would try out different recipes. These experiments would also come with the need to buy ingredients I didn’t even know existed, new cooking pans and equipment. All these were on my dime, but they say a woman makes a home, so I consoled myself that that was what was happening.

Social media was the third partner in our relationship. When we’d argue, there was always a quote or a clip talking about a similar scenario. Funny enough, Vicky sent me such clips when she felt she was on the right side of things, which was always. Many times, I didn’t know whether I should first address her actions or the arguments in the content she sent me.

It quickly got tiring to argue someone else’s opinion.  We were constantly doing things that neither of us enjoyed because some stranger on social media said it was a good thing. Vicky had no original thoughts on any subject, whether it was politics, work, religion, parenting, beauty, food or relationships. Even when she didn’t directly quote some comment from social media, you could hear it in her arguments.

Then something wonderful happened in my career: I got a promotion that came with a hefty pay bump.  I had been working towards it, but it came earlier than expected. I had a rough idea of what I was going to do when I got there, but that wasn’t set for at least two more years. Now that the money was already there, I felt I needed to analyse my choices.

I asked Vicky’s opinion on what to do. In the only way she could think of, she once again used social media to help her. Most of them included upgrading our lifestyle. She lined up possible houses we could move to, and suddenly, my car, which had been serving us just fine, was too old.

“Babe, a man of your calibre should be driving something better,” said Vicky.

She was armed with arguments like, “You need to look a certain way to be treated in a particular way.”

I was given a list of possible neighbourhoods to move to and the cars to consider. We went through each one of those suggestions and did a pros and cons list. Finally, I was hit with how men with such rankings treat their women.

“We can’t live our lives keeping up with the Joneses,” I told her.

“Other people are living like that; why are you making it hard like you can’t, yet I’ve seen what you’ll be making?” Vicky asked.

I tried explaining to her why it wasn’t wise to do things that way, but she told me that I had a scarcity mentality.  Those discussions made me regret seeking her opinion, but they also revealed to me how deeply the influence of social media was rooted in her. I knew we couldn’t work out, so we broke up not long after that.

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