It's cuffing season: the time of year where the weather cools down and folks look for a warm body to cuddle up with. But we're getting into some of the less warm and fuzzy aspects of dating. This week – a lot of us have seen how explosive breakup stories have been on social media. From Reesa Teesa's "Who TF did I marry..." to Spritely's breakup song, these posts have been drawing gasps and gaining traction. But is it harmless fun, or an invasion of privacy?To find out, Brittany is joined by Molly McPherson, crisis PR expert, and Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent at Vox. They get into what people actually get out of breakup posting - and discuss their theories of poster's etiquette.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What should you do if you get dumped?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Let's say you've been dating someone for a while. You think things are going well. You go on a trip together and And their ex is at the same resort by coincidence. You gotta be kidding me. Your partner and their ex run off together.
You're heartbroken. Sad, right? Do you post a story about this? Maybe a TikTok or Instagram? I don't know. Do you share the details online? What would you do?
Oh my God. Well, first of all, this is like the saddest situation. I hate this for me. But okay, I know exactly what I would do. Okay. I would have not one margarita, I would have like 12 margaritas. And then I would post probably something to my close friends on Instagram being like, what the .
And then when I was sober the next morning, I would delete that and then not post for like a year and only text with a core group of friends until I was ready to emerge Phoenix-like back onto everyone's timelines better than ever and glowed up.
Did you hear that? It's the sound of cuffing season. The time of year where the weather cools down and folks look for a warm body to cuddle up with. But we're getting into some of the less warm and fuzzy aspects of dating. For the next couple of weeks on It's Been a Minute, we're kicking off cuffing season with some of the big questions and big debates about dating.
This week, a lot of us have seen how explosive breakup stories have been on social media. From Risa T says, who the F did I marry?
Hi and welcome. We all know why you're here. You're here for part of the new series that I'm calling Who the F? Did I marry?
To Spritely, a.k.a. Texas Breakup Girl, and her TikTok breakup hit.
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Chapter 2: Is it okay to post breakup details online?
Imagine you live in L.A. with your boyfriend and everything's going amazing till he says, babe, I want to move back to Texas to be closer to my dad.
But we want to know, is it okay to post breakup details online? We asked people on the street to hear what they had to say.
I just think it's messy. I think it can come back to haunt you. Even if it's something really egregious, I would feel embarrassed posting it.
I'm personally and very much the kind of person that will keep our relationship private. I mean, I eat the s*** up, though.
Clearly, breakup posting is a contentious subject. So I am thrilled to welcome Molly McPherson, crisis PR expert, and Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent at Vox. Excited to be here to talk about this topic. Thank you so much for having us. We're going to get into what people actually get out of posting their breakup deets online.
And we ask, what's the line between a juicy story and an invasion of privacy?
Is it ever okay to post breakup details online? In my opinion, you have every right to make art out of your pain. And if your art is posting, I love that for you. So I will never, ever censor someone's freedom to post whatever they want, even if it means blowing up their life.
Now, the thing, you know, as someone who writes about the internet is I will tell you is that if it's really dramatic and if it's really messy, that will leave your circle and you might become the internet's main character. And if you want to do that, if you're ready to do that is a question that's up to you.
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of sharing breakup stories?
Yeah. Being the main character, that's not something I would necessarily choose for myself. No. Not at this point in my life. I don't need to stress. What do you think, Molly? Is it ever okay to post breakup details online?
Well, social media nowadays is part of the modern breakup toolkit, if you will. As someone who looks at these case studies online and And I see messy breakups and what they do to a personal reputation. I mean, of course, it wouldn't be advisable every time. However, there's a very compelling reason why Gen Z in particular, I think, likes to do it is it's used as a coping mechanism.
It's very hard to keep pain inside. So generationally, where we might do this over crying over drinks with friends, it's the same thing for Gen Z. Their comfort is in their community and sharing it online. So if they can do it in a way that helps them cope and gives them a way to heal through it, then it could be a positive thing. Yeah.
Rebecca, you said something interesting. You said that everyone has the right to post online, but you think it's bad etiquette. Do you have like a theory of posters etiquette? And why does this posting about breakups so openly? Why does this go against it?
Okay. I mean, posters etiquette, it kind of boils down to one thing, which is never post. Obviously, that's not the world we live in. But it basically boils down to this idea that every post is probably a mistake. Anytime some niche drama goes viral on one corner of the internet, very, very quickly, the rest of the internet will follow.
And so what happens is you'll see someone make a little video that they didn't think was going to break outside of their own circle where they're – talking about, say, a guy that ghosted them and was, you know, did crappy stuff to them on dating apps.
If I'm following, I think you're referencing the story of West Elm Caleb. Yep. It's this dating story that went viral a couple years ago about a serial ghoster named Caleb who worked at, you guessed it, West Elm.
This video shows up on your For You page and you happen to be dating a West Elm Caleb, consider yourself warned. And then another girl was like, he did the same thing to me.
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Chapter 4: How does social media influence modern breakups?
The way that I rushed to make this video, I also have a story about West Elm Caleb.
People find the guy. It takes roughly two seconds to find the guy if you have the whole internet working on it. And then the guy gets fired from his job and whatever. And it's like, the punishment isn't quite fitting the crime here.
You're kind of putting it on the line that the whole internet is going to agree with you, that you are the victim or the good person in this scenario when you have no idea how the internet's going to react. And you will definitely be surprised by how the internet will react.
Molly, I see you nodding vigorously.
Yeah, Rebecca is absolutely right. And she's noting, you know, a time where I noticed the shift where people were noticing, okay, he may have done something, but why are we out to destroy this person's life over it? And then it boomeranged back on the person.
So I think the key to sharing your breakup online isn't so much whether or not you should do it, but it's what is your intention for doing it? If you are sharing your breakup because you want to share vulnerability and you're using it to process your grief, because that's what breakup is. It's grief.
then that is intentional for a reason, for healing and creating community and possibly helping other people going through the same thing. But when you use it to weaponize, it can cause a lot of harm and people will call you out and the internet will let you know that, no, this is not right.
Okay, so we've been talking about like everyday normal people using social media to talk about breakups, but I'm curious how celebrity breakups have fed into this trend. Let's talk about a recent example. There's been a lot of chatter about this Zach Bryan and Brianna Chicken Fry breakup.
So country music star Zach Bryan recently went viral for posting his own breakup story with podcaster and internet personality Brianna LaPaglia, better known under her internet nickname Brianna. as Brianna Chicken Fry.
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Chapter 5: What are the ethical considerations of breakup posting?
I think we're culturally very used to tabloids and celebrity gossip. And it feels like the breakup posting trend has kind of elevated everyday people's breakups into the same space as celebrity breakups. And some people have even capitalized on the fame that these breakup stories bring. Like, for instance, the girl who recently wrote a song about her Texas breakup.
I mean, I think the incentives are so different, but also kind of they're becoming more similar. I think in Brianna Chicken Fry's case, she is a woman who's already built a reputation on being like fun and like gossipy. And she has a podcast where she like tells it to you straight.
And I also think that she knows that this breakup she has with this very famous person doesn't really harm her reputation because that's already kind of her thing. And I also think that when you have a regular person, and I'm so glad you brought up the Texas breakup girl. I actually interviewed her and- your life can change in an instant if you kind of
if you just put it all out there and turn it into something people want to watch. And I think that's what, her name's Spritely, that's what she did. And it's interesting when you go back and see her old TikToks, they're very much about her trying to play the algorithm game and kind of being frustrated by it. It's her trying to have her songs blow up and she didn't really find a lot of success.
When I spoke to her, you know, she was very much in grief and I felt so bad for her. And it was just so ironic and sad. The reason she finally got what she wanted, which was like people to hear her music, was like this kind of joke parody song about her breakup.
We've been incompatible this whole time and that we have nothing in common.
The incentives for like crying on Maine have changed because so many people have now flipped that into a career. I think you can look at Risa Tisa's 50 part TikTok series, Who the F*** Did I Marry? She now has a TV deal with Shondaland.
But I think that normal people or at least people who, you know, are not quite famous, but at least have some experience online, they know that like if they hit the viral jackpot, this could completely change their life for the better. And so there's never been more incentives to post about a breakup.
Coming up, when is breakup posting fun and harmless and when does it tip into maliciousness? Stay with us. Touching back on West Elm Caleb, a bunch of people on the internet tracked him down and doxed him and got him fired from his job at West Elm. I wonder, how do you differentiate between harmless storytime gossip and then like a real invasion of privacy?
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Chapter 6: How do celebrity breakups impact everyday people?
First of all, he's not a public figure. He's not a famous person. And also what he did doesn't really like the stakes are just not that high for this. The real issue with this kind of dynamic that plays out on social media all the time is that that can just as easily be weaponized against anyone the Internet decides doesn't like.
It's been weaponized against people who don't conform to standards of society. gender or beauty that the internet decides makes you suspect. So when you see it happening to someone like West Elm Kalem, you could say like, well, you know, that guy's, you know, not a very good guy. Who cares what happens to him? I think we should care because it could happen to a lot of other people too.
Yeah. And what makes the online breakup sharing unique is its dual nature. So again, not only is it a personal coping mechanism, but you're touching into online outrage and there isn't any critical thinking involved whatsoever. It's all emotional.
So true. I mean, I guess there's no way to like measure the punishment to the crime when the internet is involved. So we talked about some possibly like healing and helpful ways that posting online can help someone process a breakup, as you mentioned, kind of like leaning into vulnerability.
But I also feel like I've seen examples before of this kind of posting serving as a warning for other people who might be experiencing extremely negative or even abusive aspects of a romantic relationship.
Yeah, I think as much as we love to talk about like the dangers of posting and of social media, I think it's easy to gloss over the fact that it has been like extraordinarily helpful to connect people that otherwise would never have met thriving or suffering in ways that they relate to. I think that's such a great thing that social media has done.
But, you know, the flip side of that is obviously everyone knowing your business all the time.
Almost every single emotion that you express online is going to generate backlash, some level of backlash, except for one. And that's extreme grief and sadness. People will bring you up because people love to bring people down, but people also love to bring people up. There's also divorce, messy breakup, divorce. algorithm that is filled with people who help.
I mean, women, the algorithm brings every divorced woman who's ever been scorned or wrong and they lift up that person. So, and they give them tips and tell them what to do. It's a remarkable thing to watch.
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