DATING DISCREETLY

Forget 'hard launching' a new partner on Instagram, today it's all about the 'no-launch', and keeping your relationship as offline as possible. It's a change that Olivia Petter welcomes

- Olivia Petter

For a while, you couldn’t spend two minutes online without seeing someone doing a “hard launch”. No, they weren’t promoting a new product or some sort of layman’s rocketship. They were posting a photo of themselves and their new partner to their Instagram grid, probably with a pithy, self-deprecating and slightly insufferable caption. Think: “Two months with this one” or “Alert the press!”.

Like all of social media, the whole thing is a little nauseating. See also: the soft launch, meaning the same exact thing except instead of posting to your grid you post to your story. Or you might simply share a photo of your partner’s hand or back as opposed to their face.

Regardless of whether you went hard or soft, both were indicative of the same, supercilious trend that saw people feeling compelled to “announce” when they were in a new relationship on social media. Of course, this holds some merit for celebrities, or influencers with millions of followers. But it holds significantly less for regular people.

And yet, all of us did it – myself included. There was a sense of pride in it – like I’d ticked off an all-important societal box: getting a partner. The validation trickled in with every like and comment, most of which came from strangers – because, of course, by the time you post about a partner on social media, chances are your friends and family already know all about them.