ROSEMARY ABBOTT | Culture
THE EX FILES
Sophie Williams, 27 has become one of the first users to experience Instagram’s controversial new “emotional accuracy” feature, after discovering that “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye and Kimbra now appears to play automatically when visiting an ex-partner’s Instagram account.
Williams said she was simply doing what thousands of people around New Zealand do after a breakup, checking up on someone she insists she has “completely moved on from”.
Williams, who split with her ex-boyfriend Jake earlier this year, said she decided to visit his Instagram profile after wondering what he had been up to.
“I wasn’t stalking him,” Sophie explained. “I was just having a quick look to see if he was doing okay, what he’d been up to, and whether he’d somehow changed his entire personality in the three months since we broke up.”
However, the routine Instagram investigation took an unexpected emotional turn when Sophie noticed the familiar opening notes of the 2011 hit begin playing the moment she opened Jake’s profile.
“At first I thought my phone was glitching,” she said. “Then I realised it was playing ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ and I was like… wow, Instagram really knows exactly what I’m doing.”
Sophie said the timing of the song was “weird, but strangely comforting”.
“It actually made me feel better,” she admitted. “Because Jake is somebody that I used to know. Technically, that’s exactly what the song is about. It was like my phone was saying, ‘Hey, maybe looking at his profile for the fifth time today isn’t as strange as you think.’”
The new feature has reportedly been welcomed by recently single Instagram users, although some have questioned whether the technology is helping people move on or encouraging them to continue scrolling through old memories.
“I know it’s probably not healthy looking at his photos,” Sophie said. “But when the app plays a song reminding me he’s someone I used to know, it almost feels like permission to keep going.”
More to come.
