Subtweeting – The act of posting on social media about a person and making it obvious about whom you’re referring to, without actually mentioning the person’s name; in most cases, the post is negative.

Finsta –  These accounts, also known as “spams,” are accounts meant only for one’s closest friends, although most people’s spams are followed by many more people than just close friends. While posts on real accounts are more refined, finstas are a place for more personal, crude, or unfiltered (both aesthetically and verbally) posts.

Subtweeting is an epidemic that has been sweeping the social media universe for years. Tweets referring to subtweeting date back as early as 2009 and the term was officially added to Urban Dictionary in 2010. Somehow, unlike most Internet fads, the habit has survived for years.

Subtweeting has never made sense to me. The very basis of the concept is cowardice. The all-too-common custom perpetuates the growing culture of resorting to petty methods of humiliation and slander via public platforms when faced with conflict. Rather than choosing to maturely and privately confront whoever is the source of one’s anger, people turn to their social media. People choose to subtweet when they, subconsciously or not, want to cause drama and attract attention. They want to anger the person on the receiving end of the post. And, they want bystanders to feed into their antics and reward them with attention. What happened to face-to-face confrontation? I simply cannot fathom why one would think the most effective solution when angry with someone is to immaturely and indirectly call them out on social media to fifty plus people.

Though the toxic practice originated in the world of Twitter, it has recently found a home on Instagram, with the rise of “spams,” or “finstas.” Undoubtedly, subtweeting is a monster on its own, but finstas have brought forth a whole other beast. Not only are spam accounts plagued with subtweets, they are teeming with a constant flow of complaints, rants, and dramatizations.

I won’t pretend as if I am a stranger to complaining or ranting or being dramatic — I certainly am not. However, I strongly believe that social media is not the place for this. A large majority of spam accounts are practically dedicated to complaining and ranting. Spams have become a vehicle for exaggeration and overoveranalyzation. The worst part of it all is that the complaints and rants are almost always about the most trivial things: high school drama, sports, material possessions, etc. Yet, they depict these superficial issues to be life-ending.

With the combination of long winded rants, overdramatic complaints, and immature subtweets, I have simply had enough of the inevitable bombardment of teenage angst and drama following me on every social media platform.

What happened to privacy?