Be honest, whom do you secretly post for on Instagram?

She adds that many of her followers are also people who knew her many years ago when she was “an ugly duckling, not nearly as cool or smart as I am now.” When she posts pictures, she always wonders how these people perceive her and hopes that her glow-up surprises them. Before speaking with Alia, I had admitted to my friends that my One True Follower was my editor, someone I had admired even before she ended up becoming my mentor, then friend. Despite our present closeness, I still always feel the urge to impress her: to sound as intelligent and funny as I think she is. It was simple: “I feel really happy when she likes one of my stories or thinks something I posted is funny.” Now, however, I realised, there was another group of people I posted for: my former schoolmates.

Although I wasn’t exactly unpopular in school, I wasn’t the popular kid either. It bothered me to no end. Even years after graduating, I wondered how I could become cooler, more aspirational, more desirable. How could I become someone that everyone envied yet wanted to be friends with? My social media became the best way to project a different image of me in public. It was here that I could be more sociable, more nonchalant, more fun. I could casually talk about my accomplishments, my attractive friends and my exciting travels, a reminder that I had evolved. Validation from strangers hardly mattered. Instead, I desperately wanted to prove a point to the ghosts of my past.

I wasn’t the only one who took this path. Stalking the Instagram accounts of peers who were less popular than I was—unpopular, even—I found that they appeared completely different from who they were IRL. Their candid photos were edited, their captions poetic and philosophical. Sometimes, I could hardly even recognise them. I realised that just like me, they were trying to undo what people used to think of them and climb higher up the food chain of popularity.

Through her Instagram account, my friend Parnika also tries to distance herself from who she used to be. “Even though we don’t talk anymore, I always post with this former friend in mind,” she admits. “He was my harshest critic creatively. I don’t even care if he interacts with what I post. I just want him to see that I’m happier now and I’m able to come from a place that’s more independent from him.”