Weve all been there, you start dating someone new, swap Instagrams and all of a sudden, youre noticing every little thing they do online. The pictures they like, the people they follow and most annoyingly, where they appear on the list of people that viewed your Instagram Story.
It sounds ridiculous, but with the addictive nature of social media, its hardly surprising so many of us have taken to noting down these seemingly minor changes in someones social media behaviour. If youre a basic like me, you might even be posting things with the intention of having a certain someone see it (who doesnt love a thirst trap??) and in that case, youre definitely checking who viewed your story.
But what does the order people appear in on your story views ACTUALLY mean? If a frenemy suddenly starts appearing at the top of the list all the time, does that mean theyre stalking you relentlessly? If the person you fancy drops to the bottom, have they stopped engaging with your profile as much? And most importantly, if your crush is your number one viewer ARE THEY IN LOVE WITH YOU OR WHAT?
No, but seriously, we know we shouldnt care but frankly, we do. We all put on content on social media with the intention to have some sort of social impact or youd just keep your cocktail selfies to yourself so its not exactly surprising some of us care about what impact that content has actually had on the people that interact with our content most.
So, how does Instagram order the viewers of your story?
In other words, are Instagram Story viewers ranked in order of how much they fancy you, please God yes? Well, product lead for Instagram Home, Julian Gutman revealed this very information to The Verge last year.
The people that show up on that list are not the people that stalk you the most, its actually based on your activity and the people youre closest to, Gutman said. There are a lot of confounding factors, do you visit their profile, like their feed post, comment on their feed post, view their stories? Do you check the list multiple times? If you [do], [the algorithm] tries to show you a new set of people, its trying to give you new information every time you check the list.
So, in the same way that pictures come up on your feed first based on who you interactive with most as opposed to chronologically, like they used to in the glory days of Instagram Story Viewers will appear like that too.
Honestly, we shouldve known that were the ones stalking, not being stalked but that doesnt stop us being disappointed. Maybe we should all just live in blissful ignorance instead and pretend it means everyone fancies us 2020 has been a hard enough year as it is.
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