You Said You Hate Them. So Why Are You Still Watching?

Let's just get this out in the open: you have at least one account you follow — or at minimum, regularly check — that makes you feel some version of awful every single time. Maybe it's a creator whose whole vibe grates on you. Maybe it's an influencer whose life looks suspiciously curated and whose opinions make your eye twitch. Maybe it's an ex's new partner who posts motivational quotes while wearing matching linen sets on a beach somewhere.

You've told your friends you can't stand them. You've maybe even ranted about them in a group chat. And yet — there you are, 11:47pm, phone tilted so your roommate can't see the screen, watching their Stories like you're on the clock.

Welcome to the hate-follow. It's messy, it's weirdly common, and it says something uncomfortable about all of us.

The Psychology Behind the Scroll

Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: hate-following isn't really about hate. It's about activation. When we encounter someone who irritates us, challenges our sense of self, or represents something we find threatening or unfair, our brains don't just shut down — they light up. Annoyance, contempt, envy, disbelief — these are all high-arousal emotional states. And high arousal, neurologically speaking, is compelling.

Psychologists call this the "approach-avoidance conflict" — we're simultaneously repelled by something and drawn toward it. It's the same circuitry that makes you slow down to look at a car accident even when every rational part of you says to keep moving. The content that pisses you off is, in a very real sense, more emotionally engaging than the content that makes you feel nothing.

Social media platforms know this. Outrage keeps people on-app longer than joy does. The algorithm isn't neutral — it's been optimized for engagement, and nothing is more engaging than feeling wronged.

What You're Actually Getting Out of It

Hate-following serves a function. That's the uncomfortable part. We don't keep doing things that give us nothing, even when those things feel bad on the surface.

For some people, it's about comparison — specifically, the kind that makes you feel better about yourself. Watching someone you perceive as overconfident or undeserving stumble is satisfying in a way that's hard to explain without sounding petty (because it is a little petty, and that's fine, you're human). There's a reason "main character gets humbled" is its own genre of content.

For others, the hate-follow is actually about proximity to something they secretly want. The fitness influencer whose whole personality you claim to find insufferable? Sometimes the irritation is really just envy wearing a different coat. The lifestyle blogger whose aesthetic you mock in the group chat? You've screenshotted their apartment layout twice. We're not always honest with ourselves about what bothers us and why.

And then there's the conflict-seeking angle — some of us genuinely find low-grade antagonism stimulating. Not in a dramatic way, but in a "this is my emotional junk food" kind of way. Watching someone be wrong on the internet, especially someone with a large platform, can scratch an itch that's hard to describe. It's outrage as entertainment. It's the culture war version of reality TV.

The Line Between Curiosity and Compulsion

Not all hate-following is created equal. There's a difference between checking in on a creator you find annoying because they occasionally do something genuinely interesting, and spending forty-five minutes a night spiraling through someone's content while your chest gets tighter and your mood tanks.

The first is just... being a person on the internet with complicated feelings. The second is worth paying attention to.

When the follow starts to feel compulsive — when you notice you're seeking it out even when you know it'll make you feel worse, when you're going out of your way to find new reasons to be upset — that's emotional dysregulation doing its thing. It can become a way of outsourcing your anxiety onto someone else, of staying stuck in a low-grade state of grievance that's uncomfortable but familiar.

This is especially true when the person you're hate-following represents something personal. An ex. A former friend. Someone who got the opportunity you wanted. In those cases, the "hate-following" is often just grief or resentment that hasn't found another outlet yet.

What Your Follow Patterns Are Actually Telling You

Here's the editorial opinion I'll stand behind: the accounts that bother you the most are worth examining, not because you owe those creators your energy, but because your reaction to them is data about you.

If you find yourself consistently irritated by people who seem confident without, in your view, earning it — that's something to sit with. If you're drawn to watching creators who live in a way that looks like freedom but feels performative to you — ask yourself what you actually want that you're not letting yourself have. If the hate-follow is someone from your real life, at some point the healthiest move is just to remove the access point entirely, because no amount of checking in is going to give you the resolution you're looking for.

The internet has made it very easy to stay in a state of low-grade conflict with people who don't even know you exist. And while there's something almost democratizing about the fact that you can watch and critique and roll your eyes at someone with millions of followers, it's worth asking who that actually serves.

The Unfollow You Keep Not Doing

The funny thing about the hate-follow is that the solution is genuinely simple — and genuinely difficult. Unfollow. Mute. Block if you need to. The button exists. It takes two seconds.

But we don't do it. Because somewhere under the irritation and the eye-rolls, the account is giving us something. Maybe it's entertainment. Maybe it's validation. Maybe it's a weird sense of community with other people who feel the same way. Maybe it's just habit at this point, the digital equivalent of a route you keep driving even though the road's been bad for years.

The honest question isn't "why do I hate this person?" It's "what am I getting from this that I haven't found anywhere else yet?"

Answer that, and the unfollow gets a lot easier.

Or don't answer it and keep watching their Stories at midnight. No judgment — we've all been there. But maybe, just maybe, it's worth figuring out what the scroll is really about.