Send me anonymous messages!
It’s a jargon of one famous and happening app: NGL.
The day is good. It’s raining outside and you’re on your own, enjoying a cup of hot mint tea in a cafe. You get bored observing strangers around ordering and chattering, so you decide to open Instagram.
“Before the year ends, send me anonymous messages!”
In a spare of two minutes swiping your story timeline, you have seen at least three of the people you follow attaching a link for their followers to send them messages anonymously.
You don’t really know the two of them, so you skipped. However, the other one is your friend in real life. You care about them, so you tap the link and send them a message full of sweet affirmations you think they’ll deserve.
Sent.
You still have a few minutes more to spend your time on Instagram. Mindlessly go back and forth checking your DM and timeline, and — hold on, that’s your crush attaching the link!
He or she matters to you, and you want to make them feel good. Besides, there’s no better way to confess your love without the fear of possible rejection. All because he or she will never know it’s a special message from you.
You pick the nicest words for this specific person. Now you’re hoping that your message full of love will be replied in a form of Instagram story, hoping they’ll thank you for making them feel lucky or happy.
To me, the concept brought up by the app is simply cool. The idea that you can interact with your followers on Instagram (or other social media) anonymously gives you a sense of safety.
As the sender, you feel safe because you can say anything — good or bad — without them knowing it’s you. You can throw sensitive questions, love confessions, admiration, even hate comments.
You send them messages and you have nothing to lose. Since it’s unidentifiable, you won’t likely to care that much if your messages are being ignored.
As the receiver, isn’t it nice to get a bunch of compliments from unknown people? Even if you get hateful messages, you have no idea who the person behind it is (unless you only have maximum 18 followers, you might make a good guess!).
Although if that’s the case, I won’t say anonymous followers telling what they dislike about you will be less affecting. It will probably hurt you just the way it should. But at the end of the day, you might couldn’t care less (and I highly recommend it).
You might as well receive questions from your curious followers. Oh, the joy of answering questions about things and to explain all the what-when-where-who-why and how.
After all, it’s just another way to start a short, indirect interaction as social creatures. If anything, that’s what social media all about: a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation to fulfill one of your basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy, whichever you prefer. Esteem? Love? Safety?
Yes, that’s Wednesday Addams hijacking my last paragraph. She has a little mean take on social media. Don’t listen to her, enjoy nurturing your carefully-presented online persona.
