15 hours ago
Gay influencer couple Probably This broke up. The response is alarming at best.
Are we, as a society, OK when relationships ending on any sort of stage sends ripples across tens of thousands of people eager to engage in an algorithmic bloodletting?
If you've spent any amount of time on the internet, you've probably heard this one before: Internet couple attracts an audience. Internet couple breaks up. Former internet couple's followers try to figure out who gets custody in the split.
There's several somethings to be said about living your relationships Extremely Online in an attention economy, and they mostly boil down to this: Influencers are not your #RelationshipGoals. We were reminded of that again recently.
On Aug. 16, influencers Probably This – a couple comprising Matt Armato (bald) and Beau Ciolino (not bald) – published a now-deleted video announcing they broke up after 12 years. I found their Instagram account in the depths of my 2020 pandemic doomscrolling and clicked the follow button for their design, renovation and decoration of a charming New Orleans home.
Five years later, they've called it quits, but cited an enduring mutual respect and care for each other as they move on. (Armato got the Probably This TikTok account and Ciolino got the Instagram.)
From one bald gay to another (though, I promise, not exclusively because of that), I empathize with Armato, whose clear discomfort was the impetus for the audience to scathingly pick Ciolino apart. Accusations of cheating, assumptions about open relationships and critiques of their differing demeanors (Ciolino seemed bubbly in a nervous way; Armato appeared quietly devastated) filled the comment sections of the now-deleted video. The discourse is discoursing, which prompted Armato to post a story highlight to his Instagram page.
'I know the video has sparked a lot of reactions,' Armato writes. 'Please know that there are no teams here. I see your compassion and I appreciate it, but if your support for me looks like tearing him down I don't want it.'
People break up. The internet has changed what that looks like.
People break up. Everyone does that. But the internet has changed our relationship with how relationships conclude, and it leaves us all spinning through the vacuum where there should be space, peace and processing.
Because Armato and Ciolino made a living, at least on some level, by putting their relationship online and commodifying their personal lives, they felt they owed it to their audiences to explain their separation.
I'm not part of their relationship, and I don't pretend to be an expert on either one of them. I've followed their content casually at best.
But like Facebook rolling out legacy pages for dead users, we're still in the nascent stages of an internet that continues to redefine itself and the relationships around us. As a result, we're not thinking about what happens when a relationship publicly implodes, and our mileage in the aftermath may vary. In this case, we've gone from tablescapes to tribunals.
I live for the mess. But we're not entitled to any of it.
Admittedly, I live for it. I also desperately need us all to collectively march out our front doors and touch the nearest patch of grass.
Perhaps it's that when gay audiences see gay people in relationships, they receive outsize attention and parasocial projections both on the relationship as a concept and also the individuals within them because of the representation the community sees from them – especially considering the historic lack of representation we've felt in spaces that were not ours to create.
But, gay people set conveniently aside, the thematic thread in any kind of online relationship is that we're buying what they're selling in an economy predicated on attention. That comes with the highs and, for the more patient among us, the perceived ultimate low: the breakup that unfolds just as much online as the relationship did.
Everyone loves a messy fight – at least, at my messiest, I'd water the sidewalk if it meant I could be nosy about an argument down the street – so social media is an ideal front porch to eavesdrop in real time as people and relationships unravel.
Still, our parasocial relationships with these couples threaten to (and often do) shift our role as passive observers into active participants. We're not just watching and liking. We're commenting and taking sides in a void of context. Our currency becomes zingy reads and memetic reaction images and backhanded messages of support for one person or the other.
That can't be healthy for any of us.
Not for an audience that misunderstands our place in a relationship that has invited us in as casual observers. Not for a couple or content creator navigating a difficult space that sees their comment section revolting against the absence of a relationship that doesn't exist anymore. And not for the people somewhere in between, navigating a spew of videos by and about couples who aren't together anymore.
What do influencers actually owe you?
It's easy to wave this off as a piece of non-reality – it's not real and can't hurt us – but as our younger generations continue to experience higher levels of isolation, the internet grows as a bastion of community and connections, and thus the real-world impacts become more undeniable.
The internet is real and it can hurt you.
Perhaps there's some schadenfreude there in getting to see the walls crumble down and reality peek through. Real relationships and real people are deeply complicated, take a metric ton of work and you are not promised your idea of success. Seeing that stripped away thrills us because it's a reminder that the influencers who dupe us into buying their display of perfection are not all they pretend to be.
It's fine to admire what you aspire for. It's good, even, to identify and appreciate that you have representation. But also accept that you are only getting the version of the story influencers choose for you. This is an attention economy, and they benefit from obfuscating the truth. It should not stop us from pursuing our own and living our lives defined by our own rules.
The reality is that we never should've been idolizing relationships like Probably This – or the people who actually live them – to begin with. Otherwise, we're living in a digital panopticon of our own making.
Did that former influencer couple ever really owe anyone the truth? And are we, as a society, OK when relationships ending on any sort of stage sends ripples across tens of thousands of people eager to engage in an algorithmic bloodletting?
Probably not.
Drew Atkins is an opinion digital producer for USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at aatkins@
