"You didn't see me," she said. "You just saw a picture of me."
The pressure mounted when Leo’s friends started asking why he wasn't "posting her." They wanted the hard launch, the filtered selfies, the public validation of their relationship. Maya hated it. To her, a photograph was a way to preserve a feeling, not a way to perform it.
: The social expectation to validate a relationship through public digital milestones.
"If we put it out there," Maya said one night, "it stops being ours. It becomes a set piece."