This Guy Told His Cousin Her Social Media Is Weird and Pretentious. Was He a Jerk?

It can be hard to break the news to someone that their social media presence is off-putting to a lot of people.

But I guess some folks just don’t know how they’re portraying themselves for all to see…

And a guy took to the “Am I the A**hole?” page on Reddit to ask if he acted like a jerk when he told his cousin that her social media presence is…not great.

Go ahead and take a look.

AITA for telling my cousin that her social media presence is pretentious and weird?

“My (32M) cousin (27F) is a phd student–has been for about four years now I think. And honestly in the time since she’s been at college in general her personality has changed, but even more so with this new school.

One of the ways I’ve seen it is on social media (facebook, twitter, instagram). She literally only talks about grad school and academics and “theory” (this is what she calls it and tbh it’s all very confusing to me and I don’t know how to describe it) and stuff like that. there are barely any updates on her life and when there are it’s still academic stuff.

Think pictures of her and coworkers at conferences, meetings with a “theory reading group,” department happy hours, etc. So when she’s not discussing hardcore academic texts on her social media with other professors and grad students, she’s sharing pictures of her at all these academic events. She just recently posted a big thing about how she’s excited to present at “MLA” this year (couldn’t even tell you what that is).

Honestly, all us cousins used to be very close but now all of us really can’t relate to her as we’re not exactly a family that did college and stuff like that. She’s not like that in person at all and just wants to hang out, but her social media tends to be on our minds when we talk to her and it effects things, I think.

Anyway, she was at home for a couple of weeks this summer and a bunch of us cousins were hanging out having some drinks, every now and then if one of us got a bunch of notifications we’d check our phones (no big deal to any of us, no one was being rude and only on their phone).

She got a text and looked at her phone and smiled/laughed a bit. So I said “get anything good?” and she said “yeah, a friend sent me a really funny meme, here, I’ll pull it up” and I said “is it going to be the stuff you’re always posting/sharing that none of us will get? Because I don’t want to see it if it’s that pretentious c**p.” She said no, but then said “never mind” and got all quiet.

I asked her what was wrong and she says “I didn’t realize you think I’m pretentious” and I said “well really it’s your social media, you only ever post about stuff barely anyone understands and you’re always talking about your academic life and all these things you go to, it absolutely comes across as pretentious and weird like you’re obsessed with academics and you think that having a couple of degrees makes you better.”

Most of the cousins laughed at that, while two said to cool it and to keep that for when it’s just the rest of us. She just quietly finished her drink and left for the evening without saying goodbye to anyone. She won’t answer my texts now.

I feel bad but I was just teasing her and letting her know that her social media makes her come off as a pretentious AH.”

Now let’s see what Reddit users thought about this story.

This person thinks this guy is an a**hole and that his cousin sounds like she’s on the right path.