Feed Me: After Dark
I've identified an annoying networking trend.
Hi everyone.
Every few mornings my group texts percolate with screenshots of people we know’s Instagram Stories. It’s usually unlikely pairings tagging each other in photos of the melted ice on the bottom of a cocktail glass or the outside of a bar or a sugary dessert (the photo always happens in the last third of the meeting, after said pairings have warmed up a bit). Posting that the meeting happened is important – it signals to the rest of the world, or at least their followers, that the people at the meeting are now linked. I have on record that some of these people never met again or even really clicked, but the signal was important for the 24 hours it was live on Instagram.
Sometimes it’s hard to gauge whether it’s more valuable to network in stealth, or publicly. I find value in privacy (especially in an industry where many of my peers are more or less doing similar work as me). There are people I spend time with who you might think are controversial or even risky… that’s why I don’t tell you I get dinner with them. I don’t treat networking as a sport with an audience, because I find transactionality unsettling. But I’m aware that one can forge their Instagram activity into a key.
What does the key unlock? The ability to cold DM people asking to meet, free stuff, a job if you’re lucky, invitations to parties, a boyfriend. Let’s say there’s someone you really like to follow online. In some cases, you’ll become interested in who they spend time with or what they post about. That’s why influencer marketing works (person tags brand or promotes product, their followers buy the product). But whether it’s intentional or not, that’s happening increasingly with people – person tags another person in the melting ice Instagram story, their followers become curious about tagged person. Like a digital scoreboard of social hierarchy.
To be very clear,