Web Culture
How influencers who went throughverypublic breakups told their loyal followers that they got back with their ex.
Anuntagged handin a photo of two cocktails.
Deliberate props blocking any discernible characteristics.
Brooklyn-based TikTokerKelsey Kotzur,30, shared her August 2021 engagement online and subsequent breakup five months later.
She worked with her then-ex to figure out how shed tell her 110,000 followers at the time.
The internet has made the phenomenon ofparasocial relationshipsgrow exponentially, she says.
Thats when she realized she had to say something online and clued her then-ex in.
He was sort of like, It sucks that we have to do this, she said.
They shaped theFebruary 2022 breakup announcementtogether.
She had an influx of about 30,000 followers who didnt know what happened beforehand.
The response to that video was all majority negative, she says.
The Hard Relaunch
Reuniting with an ex is an emotional whirlwind even without an online platform.
Add more than 100,000 loyal followers to the mix, and things get more convoluted.
Then people were like, We need an update.
On April 1, shemade a video kissing her now-boyfriendwith the caption Life Update and a hands-over-eyes emoji.
Before her hard launch, Kotzurs content took a staying truthful via omission approach.
She says, When we got back together, I never spoke about dating [or] being single.
Despite that, she began to open up anyway.
She rolled out her soft launch in January 2023, four months after the pair got back together.
I took him to an event and was like, You know what?
F*ck it.
Let me post this little video [of us].
We can easily get on our high horse and say, We wouldnt do that!
Often, people judge harder online than they would their friends.
You dont have to be internet famous to get this kind of response.
That way, nothing the online peanut gallery couldve said wouldve impacted their love lives.
Someone commented on my [relaunch] post being like, Not a relaunch.
It’s a rebrand, she says.
And I was like, I love that.
