The Love Island Reunion Started A Debate About Unfollowing People On Instagram And It’s A Lot More Nuanced Than It Should Be

In last night’s Love Island reunion, unfinished business seemed to be the theme of the night – and boy did it give us a whole host of awkward moments. Yewande Biala revealed her and Danny Williams were yet to speak, Anna Vakili accused Jordan Hames of flirting with her and Amber Gill confronted Michael Griffiths about his yo-yo love connections. Alas, the most uncomfortable moment came when Anton Danyluk explained why he had unfollowed Molly-Mae Hague on Instagram immediately after leaving the villa.

‘When we were in there my management followed all the islanders…I never chose to follow Molly,’ he told Caroline Flack, ‘I’m sure Molly will agree with this, we never really spoke in the villa.’ Turning to Molly, he added ‘I’ve got nothing against you. I think you’re a cracking girl but we never seen eye to eye.’

Sure as he was, Molly did not agree, replying, ‘I'm not gonna lie. I thought we were friends… yeah we weren’t the closest but I wouldn’t have said we weren’t friends.’

It was a moment that has branded the once fan-favourite Anton as ‘bitter’ and ‘rotten’, with many pointing to the fact he follows every other Islander – many of whom he never met (see: all the Casa Amor boys) – and implying he is still annoyed that Molly chose to date Tommy Fury over him.

But the more interesting debate going on around all of this is just how much we can read into an unfollow. Because, in the current world we live in where our entire lives are lived through social media – and friendships often function 90% of time through online engagement – choosing to unfollow someone actually, and sadly, says a lot.

We saw this played out when the ‘mute’ button was announced by Instagram, and celebrations online went into overdrive. Finally, after years of following people we felt obligated to, we could disappear their content from our feeds – we were free.

The truth of it is, some peoples Instagram’s are not just annoying, they’re actually triggering. That cousin always posting weight transformation pictures, your friend who becomes a mum and shares every aspect of her baby’s life, or that colleague whose face popping up unexpectedly on your phone, is enough to give you the Sunday scaries because they remind you of work. For whatever reason, plenty of people's posting habits can pull you into a frame of mind you would rather avoid. And avoiding them is totally fine if that's what you want to do.

And yet, choosing not to follow someone when you follow everyone else you have in common seems like a big statement - or even a personal attack. Because, what we post on social media is often personal. Whether you post something to be funny, to be validated in your beauty, or just to share a part of your day that you think others would enjoy – when someone responds to that with a resounding ‘nope’ and unfollows you, it says that they’re not buying whatever your selling. And when so much of what we sell about ourselves online is personal, it can speak to our insecurities.

In the context of Molly and Anton, it certainly seemed personal, after they lived together for two months and spending 24 hours a day together. When he left Love Island, his partner Belle Hassan dubbed Molly ‘two-faced’ for voting her and Anton out. Given the online vitriol towards Molly-Mae, with such ferocity towards her supposed fakeness that ‘Money-Mae’ trended on Twitter during the Love Island finale, Anton choosing to unfollow Molly was taken as a big statement.

Whether he meant it to or not, in many viewers eyes it vindicated their opinion that she was false. Because, if someone could spend 24/7 with her and dislike her enough to unfollow her and no other cast member – before she has even left the villa herself - she mustn’t be that nice of a person, right? Wrong. Or at least, we can’t know. Because we don’t know her or what went on between them in the villa. In fact, the very fact we care – or even notice – when someone unfollows someone else, is ridiculous when you really think about it.

And for someone like Molly Mae, an unfollow is more than just a click of a button. After all, she literally relies on Instagram for work – it’s her entire world as an influencer. Anton – as a gym owner - might not have the same opinion, or see why she would take it so personally

Perhaps one day we’ll live in a world who you follow and why you follow them is never questioned. But until that day, we’ll be muting and hiding and creating finstas to hide from confrontation – because you know, that British need to be endlessly polite never dies.

Read more: The best reactions to Love Island 2019...