As Above/So Below: Confessions of a Compulsive Lurker

In 2022, I made a resolution to quit social media for one year. I really only use Instagram so it was easy to delete the app from my phone and head off the grid. Even though my year off social media turned into something else completely, I was able to reflect on the experience of being online. I observed behaviors in myself and I learned how I want to exist on the internet going forward.

See I am what you’d call A Lurker. What is a Lurker? Well, there’s a whole Wikipedia post about it but I’ll surmise. A lurker is someone who participates in an online community from the sidelines; reading, watching, observing, and gleaning meaning but never participating in said community. Lurkers lurk, we don’t comment, we don’t like, we don’t reply, we don’t upvote. Lurkers lurk because you can accumulate cultural capital without having to add anything yourself. Cultural capital “comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society.” I specifically lurked on r/blogsnark for the celeb gossip and Twitter discourse without having to participate in these conversations that at times grew pedantic. I like to lurk. Lurking is fun. I like knowing what people are saying on these topics without anyone knowing what I think about these topics. It also gave me lots of interesting info to bring up when I’d hang out with people and I’d seem really smart or in the know. I was bringing in “the word on the street” dialogue and people enjoy that. Lurking made me sound more educated and gave me more to talk about with people IRL.

I find lurking to be an interesting expression of our personalities online. In my research on why people lurk I found all kinds of information on the impetus to not participate in a community. Some people lurk because they feel too intimidated to participate, and others wait until they’ve learned more to participate, although as time passes the chances of de-lurking become less likely. I’ve been a lurker on Reddit for about 13 years now, I’m more likely to turn into an echidna than delurk. “Active Lurkers,” or individuals who spread content from an online group to individuals external to the online group, help spread beneficial information to surrounding communities.
Lurking on social media can also be a form of receptive reading, whereby users seek to understand the opinions of those with divergent points of view. I found that these were all reasons I liked to lurk online. Even in my real life, I’m an observer. I’m an introvert who likes to watch, which lined up with my motivations to lurk. I also found it interesting that many found the presence of lurkers to be justification for advertising as lurkers were less likely to participate in other economically generative ways.

I like to be in the mix, I like to be in the know. Even though I was off Instagram and I wasn’t posting, my time just filled up with lurking. I spent a ton of time on my favorite lurk site, Reddit. Now Reddit is a social media site, so out of the gate, I was already cheating at my challenge. I refused to download the Reddit app and would browse on Chrome (I’m sure some of you are ripping your hair out at that thought. It’s not a pleasant experience but that’s why I do it). This felt more controlled to me and there are certain posts you can’t see on your phone. I never even signed up for a Reddit account (gold star lurker territory) but would lurk on the popular page and a few choice communities like r/popculturechat, r/blogsnark, and r/kuwtk (yes, THEM). I wasn’t participating but I was reading the content and the comments, seeing what people had to say. However, I realized something about myself in all this lurking: I like to trigger myself. The popular page on Reddit is SO triggering. And it’s really Gumpian, meaning, you never know what you’re going to get. And for every cute dog video or r/humansbeingbros post that made me tear up a little, there were about 20 shit truffles that would trigger the fuck out of me. And I realized that I’m kinda addicted to this feeling! Some people like rollercoasters, some people thrill-seek by doing drugs, and I go on r/makemesuffer and just snoop around a little. Heart rate elevated, knees weak, palms sweaty, mom’s spaghetti, I spent hours this way in 2022. I’ve never had Twitter but I sure as hell read through countless threads of Twitter snark, to see what the people are talking about (a lot about cooking your neighbors food and why that’s bad). I watched a lot of fights that happened at McDonald’s and airports. I read tons of Am I The Asshole posts and my general conclusion is ESH. I felt like Dumbledore at the Pensieve but more like the Pensieve was a toilet bowl with a one-way view of a coprophilia convention. And just like any junk addiction, it can be fun and entertaining in the short term but in the end, you always end up ashamed of yourself.

But I can’t say that my lurking was unyielding of any benefit, which therein lies the paradox of lurking. I was getting information that was useful to me, I just wasn’t helping to create more information. There are fears surrounding lurking that mimic what people fear about socialism. Namely that lurkers are getting all of the benefits of other people’s knowledge and hard work of posting without contributing anything themselves. There is the 1% rule which states “in Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.” These internet communities are seen as a public good because users can independently contribute and pool data if they choose. The survival of these communities is dependent on the contributions of their members. Right now, I can lurk to my heart’s content and there is no way to exclude me, which in turn motivates me and other users to free ride instead of contributing. I found it interesting that sites like Reddit and Twitter have set up blocking components so that users must sign in to see certain content. However, these don’t motivate me to sign up for these platforms, they motivate me to click off. I found that toward the end of the year, my lurking was engaging in a law of diminishing returns and I was checking out these websites as a compulsion, to “scratch an itch”, but I wasn’t getting the same high from lurking as I had before. I did these things without thinking mostly because the technology, even without accounts or bespoke apps, makes it easy to keep visiting the sites.

So what was originally intended to be my year without social media really turned into The Year I Lurked Hard. It’s daunting to cut yourself off from internet discourse completely, especially when all things considered, I am a Very Online person. I needed something to fill the void and that thing turned out to be lurking. Places (as much as a website can be a place) like Reddit are perfect for lurking because of the sheer amount of content generated by the user base and the confrontational bent of the discourse. It felt too overwhelming to contribute anything. At first, it was fun and I was seeing cool stuff and I had all the hot gossip I could handle but around August, the lurking, like any addiction, was wearing me out. I wasn’t enjoying the content because I felt like I wasn’t choosing my experience, just shoveling in whatever was put in front of me, no matter how grotesque. Even though I was reading more than ever, getting more information than ever, I never felt dumber.

Now I’m back on Instagram and I’m noticing that I like it a whole lot better when I am participating. When I’m posting cool pics, sharing my art, and chatting with my friends both real and internet. I like commenting on what my friends are doing. I like sharing stories of my cat. I’ve noticed that when I turn to Instagram to fill time or to scroll through mindlessly, you know to lurk, I enjoy it a lot less. Not all the social medias are created equal for me and while I have no desire to join Twitter or get back on Facebook, I do enjoy Instagram but only when I’m adding the active ingredient: participation. In a roundabout way, I came to understand a lot more about how the passive consumption of content isn’t good for my health or my nervous system, much like the passive consumption of empty calories. Anytime you aim to fill the void, the void just gets bigger, so you have to become the void to get back to center.

I wish I could say that I’m too cool for social media or that I’m going back to the land or some other bullshit but let’s be real. The Internet is cool. And I think it’s here to stay, at least for our lifetimes. The Internet is the closest thing we have to actual magic and it’s a desire machine that just keeps on cranking out the answers to your wildest dreams. I like that about the Internet. Social media has brought way more good than bad into my life, but when I use it in a way that’s generative, collaborative, and authentic. If the Internet is a toddler, we need to raise her right and that means we can’t be absentee, lurking fathers, we gotta be hands-on. So far this year I’ve done no lurking and I’ve signed off Reddit for good, my Reddit lurker era is over. They’ll never even know they miss me. Choosing my own adventure, with my Internet baby by my side, has been a lot more fulfilling so far.