Featured Image Credit: TikTok/@everybodyhasasecret
Topics: TikTok, Social Media, Instagram
Ella Scott
A woman has sparked debate after admitting she uses spreadsheet to ‘monitor’ her friends, calling it a ‘fascinating’ method.
Late last year, the anonymous woman submitted a divisive confession to the popular podcast, Everybody Has a Secret.
In November, a clip from the episode, featuring co-hosts Annabelle Lee and Louis Hanson, was posted to TikTok and has since amassed nearly 5,000 likes and over 130 comments.
It was titled: "Listener secret: I monitor every single one of my friends with a spreadsheet..."
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Writing into the Everybody Has a Secret team, the woman prefaced her story by explaining she was a ‘Type A marketing manager’ who needed to feel ‘in control’ of her life.
“Once I turned 25 and my brain finished developing I did a massive clean out of everything from possessions to people,” the confession continued.
The woman went on to reveal she thought she was an ‘excellent’ pal who worked hard to be a ‘cheerleader’ for her friends and relatives.
“I reply to every text and like every Instagram photo but that’s the thing - I felt like I wasn’t getting the same energy back,” she admitted. “What was my ratio of Instagram likes to followers?”
After crunching some numbers, the woman allegedly discovered that between five to ten percent of her followers were engaging with her social media posts.
“It’s not like I post on my grid a lot,” she continued. “I’d say about 10 times a year max.
“So, I was surprised that they weren’t more highly engaged with it. With all this in mind, I decided to open up my Instagram app and do a huge cull of my following and followers.”
The woman explained that this selective process began by doing a ‘big sweep’ of ‘easy cuts’ - such as acquaintances she’d met at weddings and people she went to high school with.
Next, she downloaded an ‘unfollow app’ to see who didn’t follow her back on social media.
Despite her efforts, the woman claimed she was ‘still unimpressed’ with her Instagram engagement and decided to go one step further.
She therefore created a spreadsheet and manually inputted data collected from her social media account.
This included followers’ names and how many of her posts they had interacted with.
After collating the results, the woman realised that many people she believed to be ‘close to’ hadn’t ‘liked’ her Instagram images for some time.
“Once someone has a super long red line I would unfollow them,” she recounted. “Not only that but I would also remove them from my followers so they could no longer follow me.
“Every time I now post on Instagram I update the spreadsheet, look at who is engaging and cut the ones that don’t.”
Despite admitting her method was ‘bizarre’, the woman claimed her spreadsheet had made Instagram a ‘much more fun place’ to post.
She added that the data was ‘fascinating’ and had allowed her to stop wasting energy on friendships that ‘didn’t deserve’ her time.
Following the admittance, TikTok users flocked to the comments section to have their say on the secret.
One viewer wrote: “That is fully mad. My best friend could unfollow me and I wouldn’t notice. People close to me have posted major milestone posts that I haven’t seen.”
“This is interesting I get where she is coming from,” said another. “If I have a friend that is active on social media but doesn’t interact with my posts it makes me take a step back and think about what’s going on.”
They added: “If they aren’t active then I can’t say much.”
A third typed: “As a marketing manager, I’m shocked she didn’t consider the algorithm and take that data into consideration.”
Someone else commented: “My best friend barely uses Instagram but she was there for my chemo.”
“I mean ultimately if it makes her happier fantastic,” penned a fifth. “But what about the people who follow a ton of people. What if they don’t see your posts at all.”