Why did you unfollow me?

Why'd You Push That Button?

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, Arts, Technology, Design

4.4 • 683 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I’m calling this week’s episode of Why’d You Push That Button the “politics of unfollowing.” What makes someone click that unfollow button, and why does it hurt our feelings when they do? Kaitlyn and I talk to two of our Verge colleagues: Managing Editor T.C. Sottek and Senior Features Editor Michael Zelenko about why they unfollow people. T.C. only follows six people on Twitter! And he only started following me and Kaitlyn after we produced this episode. We appreciate that kind gesture. Michael, on the other hand, used to care about his follower versus following ratio and has now reached a point of zen. Who cares! After all that, Kaitlyn and I take our questions to Jenn Herman, who calls herself “the world’s forefront Instagram blogger.” Jenn is fantastic and made us feel good. She points out that followers are a complete construction of tech companies. They made us care about followers. They’ve ruined us. Jenn, though, she gets it. She’s helping us. (sent via text by Ashley Carman) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why do you unfollow?
0:02.0	Why don't follow?
0:03.0	Oh, so many reasons.
0:04.0	Maybe like a month ago, I unfollow everybody that I've accumulated over the past years of Instagram.
0:09.0	I followed too many people that were too close to my, like, style of art.
0:12.0	Or just like random people I meet that they're like, oh, let's follow each other.
0:15.0	Actually, I just unfollow DJ Khaled on Twitter, just because he's so annoying with their retweets.
0:19.0	I unfollow this one girl I was talking to. She has an app that shows who unfollowed and stuff. And then in the middle of like hanging out,
0:24.3	she's like, so why did you want to follow me on Instagram? And I immediately liked her less,
0:27.7	10% less. It's slightly cool to be like, I got 10 people that I'm following. I don't care about anybody else. I'm doing my own thing, you know, whatever.
0:42.6	Hello. Welcome to Why'd You Push That Button, podcast where Ashley Carmen.
0:51.3	Hello. And Caitlin Tiffany, that's me. Talk about all of the tiny tech decisions that we make every day and how they impact our social lives.
0:55.0	Yes. What are we talking about today? I'm calling this episode the politics of unfollowing, but basically it's why did you unfollow someone. So we love social platforms here.
1:01.7	Yes. And passive aggression. Yes. Yes. And unfollowing is the most passive aggressive
1:07.2	thing you can do. Nope. It's not. Muting is the most passive aggressive thing you can do.
1:12.8	Anyway.
1:13.3	All right, we'll get into it.
1:14.5	Yeah.
1:14.7	But really today we're talking about why you unfollow someone.
1:18.5	What makes you do it?
1:19.5	What makes you push that unfollow button?
1:21.1	It's one thing if you don't follow back to start and you just never follow back.
	...

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