Love in the Age of the Algorithm

You just got #blocked. 

(The author would like to emphasise that this was pre-written several months before publication. The sentiments surrounding this situation has changed and that if her ex sees this, to please keep her blocked.)

We like to think of blocking someone as a hard reset. Mute, delete, unfollow, block— a swipe here, a tap there. He’s out of your phone, out of your life, and ideally, out of your head. Clean break. Efficient. Controlled.

But love isn’t an app. It doesn’t log out when someone disappears from a virtual space within your view. And heartbreak isn’t polite enough to stick to platform rules.

He blocked me 11 months ago. Instagram. WhatsApp. Linkedin. Spotify. Even Telegram, which we literally used twice. For all I know, he’s still lurking via a fake account. Or maybe he’s halfway across the world pretending I never existed, deludedly thinking news of him and his shaved head will never come back to me. Either way, last week, he showed up in a dream— no, nightmare— like he never left. Same hoodie. Same stupid smirk. We laughed. I woke up absolutely furious.

Movies where the main character ceases to live a new day and continues to relive the same one over and over again often remind me of this predicament. Yeah so that’s me, except I usually shoot out of bed screaming into a pillow so my parents don’t think I’ve been killed, and because I have not figured out for the life of me why 11 months on, this fully grown man has decided to act like a child and place a digital brick wall up around himself.

Let’s get one thing straight: blocking is not closure. Blocking is a digital tantrum. A way to slam the door and erase the fallout. You’re left refreshing your DMs like a fool, while the other person has mistakenly decided the entire narrative is no longer worth updating. You tell me, who’s the idiot here?

Yet— you still check who’s seen your story. You still keep a video of him telling some influencer bodybuilder that he misses you while hanging from a pull-up bar in your saved posts.  You still wonder if that new follower on Tiktok with a suspicious username is him doing recon. This is what I call post-block surveillance: when your ex disappears but leaves his sticky, digital residue all over your emotional Wi-Fi. Gross.

The silence? Weaponised. The algorithm? Relentless. It recommends you songs that sound like him. Couples who look like you two. Quotes that Pacquiao-punch you in the throat at 2AM,— oh my god I might yak out my lunch— it’s like they can hear me. Whoever is running that napkin account, count your days.

Sure, you’ve deleted the photos. Well— you didn’t tell anyone about the google drive, so let’s just go with you deleted the photos. You don’t text. You don’t post. But let’s not pretend you're not rehearsing what you'd say if he came back. You're not over it. You're just blocked. Admittedly, this has led to me lurking too hard once in a while. While I would not recommend doing so if you intend on eating, it is indeed a great pre-workout. I do my due diligence of lurking on an account that doesn’t know I exist and zoom into an unseen a photo of him, then I say “Thanks babe”, and add an extra weight onto the leg extension machine. Oh, happy days. He always knew how to encourage me, didn’t he?

Here's the kicker: you can't even be petty. You can't post cryptic captions because he won't see them. You can't watch his stories because you don't exist to him anymore. Being blocked is the heartbreak equivalent of being ghosted and then gagged— you can't even scream into the void without looking pathetic.

So what does closure look like when someone ignores you like spam email? When the last thing you hear is silence and the last thing they hear is the echo of everything you never got to say? Or in my case, the last thing we heard was a bunch of yelling at each other before both of our best friends hauled us away.

It looks like therapy. Like deleting drafts. Like not checking your Explore page for signs. Like remembering that "User Not Found" doesn't mean you weren't enough. It just means he didn't have the bandwidth to love you properly.

I’m not kidding, it actually took some professional help. I get that the idea of doing so must be scary, and that no one wants to admit that they’re seeing someone to help them with the hurdle of not receiving closure from, what, a man? Yet, we don’t really realise how much we need to be heard out in terms of other things that we haven’t got to say. I had found myself incessantly muttering, “The horse is dead, Sam. Put the stick down.” two to three times a day and yet I still could not fathom how the cord that attaches us can be felt energetically and remain intangible.

He blocked me. And maybe that was supposed to be the end. But digital love stories don’t end with clean code. They just go offline, unfinished, glitching in your sleep like a tab you forgot to close. Then what? What do I do with all this junk mail from my subconscious?

Listen I’m not some mental case alright, I’m a human being who feels deeply. Everything I’ve written thus far may prove otherwise but really past all of the tech-talk and digital innuendos, I’m a lover girl at heart. I’ve turned down and broken the hearts of other men as a result of the feelings I viscerally repress not being backed up successfully. I may have a virus of sorts for doing something so incredibly heartless, but what is a machine to do? You made me this way.

We as humans, however, are programmed to find answers we don’t have. The internet is a handy tool for giving us this information, and yet it too, is but a curse. I wish I knew not to lurk too hard sometimes. I can respect boundaries of course, but a firewall made of feelings is not going to prevent me from perusing old pieces of media and receiving real-time updates on how someone I used to love is doing. What do we do with all that curiosity, then, you may ask? We practice a well-known value that was drilled into our heads if you were a part of the local educational system in this country; self-discipline. We often lack the discipline to let go, let alone be part of a routine. Sometimes, all it takes to let go, is to know information you need— not want.

Think of it this way, assuming all things unchanged you are no longer privy to what your person is doing, yes? However, once you start making the assumption that you know them well enough to know that fact— well maybe they’re having pasta for dinner or around this time of the year they’d be in London perhaps, you regain full control of your uncertainty. This essentially means that while you think you lack control over your own thoughts which always lead back to them, being content with what you think you know is in itself, a form of knowledge. Assume they are the same. Assume they will never change. Then, understand that is the version of a person who no longer aligns with this current version of you.

Assume you know what is happening. Assume the worst if you must, but do it anyways. You are indubitably a search engine with pre-backed up information already hardwired into your motherboard (how dirty of you). So why bother wanting to know, when you already “do”? Think about it long enough and you’ll see that this delusion— I mean— law of assumption has a place in your life that offers solace. The discipline to leave it be will follow. You cannot suppress the craving of knowledge, so don’t fight it. Redirect it.