I may have posted about this already: I had a conversation with my twin brother a week ago (and a couple times before that) about how, while we blame “the algorithm” to keep us trapped in scrolling habits, we also do that organically. We pull each other down with ordinary echolalia and fond jokes romanticizing our super-long screen time.
But I can’t deny enjoying it. Instagram Reels has a few common terms, but my favorite at the moment is “[post] liking competitor.” Because in the bottom-left corner of Reels, if someone you follow has already seen and liked the reel you’re viewing, their profile picture shows up with a little heart. Since your algorithm is based on your follows, it’s pretty common to see the same “[person you follow] liked this” profile picture several times in a given scroll-session.
And they’ve made an implied competition out of it, that you should hit like on more videos, more often, so you can show up on on the bottom-left corner of THEIR feed proving that you saw the funny videos first.
There’s the idea of sending memes to each other, and then there’s the idea of seeing the same memes while leaving a marker behind. Clearly, the indirectness of the latter is funny enough to become a punchline in its own right.