The air is crisp, the leaves are changing, and cuffing season is right around the corner, which means one thing: it’s soft launch season.

What’s a soft launch? The term was popularized following the “quarantine romances” that began that summer. Rachel Sennott tweeted in July 2020: “congrats on the Instagram soft launch of ur boyfriend (pic on story, elbow and side profile only).” Soft launches usually happen in the early stages of a relationship, where you want to share that you’re effectively taken, but it’s not serious enough to tag the person or even show their face. It’s a tease to your followers: Who does that second dinner plate belong to? Is that the tip of a girl’s heel in the corner? The relationship becomes public, but the other person’s identity is not. As I notice mystery knees or unidentified silhouettes on my feed, it seems like the season to vaguely debut bae is here again.

These posts appear in a variety of forms, as unique as the couples attached to them. Some are spontaneous snaps of dates, while others are planned between the parties. “It’s funny analyzing this; it sounds so silly and juvenile. This was the summer of 2020, so not long ago,” journalism student Brynn O’Connor ‘23 says. “Both me and my boyfriend at the time were at the beach. We wanted to post about our relationship but not just yet, so instead, we both took a picture of the same thing (it was a photo of the shore at sunset) and posted it at the same time. This ‘indicated’ we were hanging out but not outright saying it.”

I have never soft-launched, besides my own dinner plate or scenes from a museum date, but you wouldn’t be able to tell. In fact, I have never posted a man outside of my prom date, and I subscribe to the Dolly Parton strategy—keeping your husband a secret for 50 years. It’s not necessarily out of embarrassment for my significant other, but rather my own hesitation to go public with something that’s not fully developed. That said, I’ve never been in a long-term relationship that’s strong enough to introduce to everyone, so maybe I’ll consider it after one solid year.

However, I have been soft-launched, or rather my hand has (holding a green juice). I honestly couldn’t care less. Sure, it’s relieving to know that someone wants to show off that they’re with me, but you wouldn’t know they’re with me. The soft launch sometimes feels like a vehicle of ego rather than affection, like a brag that you’re seeing someone new, perhaps pointed to old flames who loiter in your story views. “I was looking through the views to see if my ex saw the post (he had both of us on Snapchat),” O’Connor says. “It’s totally an attention thing but nothing that’s invalid.”

I’d prefer someone who’s proud to be with me, shows my face, and tags my profile. But if we’re in the beginning stages of dating, I’m just as—if not more—hesitant as they are to make it IG official. “I wasn’t totally into him,” O’Connor says. “He was my first boyfriend, and I was into the idea of the relationship rather than him, I think. That’s probably why I wasn’t anxious to publicize our relationship.”

She adds, “It definitely made me feel mysterious. I kept going back to his Snapchat story afterward and smirking to myself knowing our friends were putting two and two together. I wasn’t looking for him to post me right away though, that would have felt inauthentic, like ‘look, I have a boyfriend now!’”

Instagram pages serve as our public personas these days, regrettably, and sometimes committing to a “hard launch” or “BF reveal” on the grid is as real as committing to the person romantically. There are social consequences too, once the cat (or their paw) is out of the bag.

“Everyone will be looking for updates. If you stop posting with them, they’ll know you broke up,” O’Connor says. “It makes heartbreak so much worse; you can’t just move on. There’s a process of cleaning your social media from this person no longer in your life.”

Photography student Letao Chen ‘22 is even wary of posting a picture with a guy friend, in case it’s assumed to be a soft launch. “I’m conscious that it can be a cock block or turn off potential love interests, so I don’t do it often,” she says. “I feel like I’m close to people I don’t post, and I feel bad because I want my internet identity to reflect my real friendships.”

Soft Launch Season