Eleftheria Batsou

Posted on Aug 23, 2020

Exposing my Instagram DMs (and replying here!)

#instagram #dm #femalecreators #weirdmessages

👋Hello beautiful people of the world!

In this post, I'll share some of my DMs from Instagram.
I started using IG exactly 85 days ago. At first, I was deleting the "weird" messages but then I decided to keep them and make (hopefully) a fun post.

Notes:

I will not share names nor will I show anything unethical.
I will also answer some of those messages here!!
I obviously don't want to offend anyone. Maybe this post will help some people in their online communication skills.

😊I have categorized the DMs so it's a bit easier for you to follow my thoughts.

✌️Hi

I receive a lot of messages saying "hi" but those people don't mention anything else so I really don't know what they expect from me...

Below you can find a list of... "hi"

🤦‍♀️I think this guy really zoomed in on my photos!

🤦‍♀️Well... we didn't exactly meet... I don't know even your first name

🤦‍♀️And you can also find the people who just spam

I'm not a bad person, really! I just don't have the time to answer in those messages...

✌️Hello

Of course, there are multiple ways to greet someone. You can say "hi", "hello", "hey" or you can invent your own ways, such as "hie", "helli", "hlo"

🤦‍♀️You don't even type the full word... and do you expect an answer?!

🤦‍♀️Dude, you don't even know me...

🤦‍♀️Maybe this guy tried to play with the words?! I m not sure... (My name nickname is Elli so did he actually combined my name with hello?!)

✌️How are you?

Some people are polite so they do ask me "how are you". I appreciate it and honestly if I had the time I'd answer these kinds of messages, but again I can't...

🤦‍♀️And there are obviously these type of people who can't stop on "hi, how are you?" they want more... but they don't even take the time to type the full question.

✌️Nationality - Are you Indian?

🌍I don't think nationality is something that should define us.
I've never asked anyone through social media about their nationality...
Anywho... since I noticed a lot of people wanted to know my nationality I added it to my bio.
Was that was enough?
Nope!! People kept asking me...
(Most of the time they assume I'm Indian.)

✌️Are you a coder? a hacker? a dancer ?

The first thing I wrote on my bio was that I'm a developer.
Again, was that enough?
You guessed right! Nope, it wasn't.

💃Why did this person asked me if I'm a dancer?!

✌️You are a beauty (and obviously a famous model)

Thanks for your kind words, but I'm not on Instagram to show my "beauty". I'm on Instagram because I want to present my work, follow people that inspire me and hopefully motivate people to do what they love to do.

🤦‍♀️Am I famous model?

🙆Thanks for considering me and my family. I do appreciate these kinds of messages. (I'm not sarcastic)

🤦‍♀️You don't know me...

🤦‍♀️Well... I don't think we are best friends... Sorry. I don't know anything about you.

🤦‍♀️What do those people expect from me? I honestly don't know. I believe though we have different cultures and maybe I can't understand them.

✌️Shoutout

To be clear, I'm not going to promote people that

I don't know and they don't introduce themselves
are working in a different field from mine (I mean I'm not going to promote clothes, mugs or dishes since my followers are mostly 'tech' people).
I'm not personally interested in

🤦‍♀️Before I start working with IG I wasn't aware that this "shoutout" thing was so popular... Nowadays I receive so many messages for shoutouts.

✌️Teach me to code / Solve my problem / Find me a job

I also receive a plethora of messages from people asking me questions that could be Googled way to easily. I wish I could help everyone but I can't...

🤦‍♀️For example a lot of people asking me Python questions. But I don't know Python. I never said I know Python or I'm interested to learning. I never used any hashtag related to python and I barely follow people who focus on Python

🤦‍♀️Also, friendly advice, when you want to ask something introduce yourself, be polite and then ask the question. Don't say "I have a question", just ask that question...

🤦‍♀️I won't comment on all those messages, but I truly believe these questions have an answer on Google!

✌️Being ashamed of myself?

Please do take the time to read the whole conversation and you'll maybe understand me.

I don't think this person checked my profile before sending me.
I clearly said "I'm not in a mood to talk" and he kept bugging me.
Please let me know in the comments if I'm wrong

✌️Miscellaneous: Elon Musk, Astronauts, Sugar daddies, etc.

Sometimes I receive too weird messages and even if I wanted to reply I wouldn't know how...

💇For example: Did this person implied that I don't have good hair? And how could I possibly help him/her?

🤔Ok, about my IG name I have received a lot of messages (who would have thought, right?!). Apparently people cannot read correctly my name... Probably that was a wrong choice made by me.

🤖Did that person actually believe he was talking to a bot?

👽Am I an Astronaut and do I have internet in the space? well even if I don't Elon Musk is working on that🚀

🚼As for the people who are searching sugar babies on IG... oh well I'm not even bothering to comment

Ok, that was it guys!

I know this post was quite long.

The purpose of writing it and showing you those messages was because I wanted everybody to see how it's like to be a female creator on social media.
(And maybe it's a bit educational and funny at the same time!)

I don't imply that males or other genders don't receive "weird" messages. In fact, I have a male friend with more than 20K followers and he said he's receiving messages of hate of people accusing him that he's gay because he never shows girls on IG stories.
I mean this is absurd.

Final thoughts

When sending a message to a creator do at least those 4 things:

Don't forget to introduce yourself
Be polite
Make some research on your own
Describe the problem

Please comment on your thoughts so we can have a nice discussion about DMs on social media.
Thank you for reading.

👋Hello, I'm Eleftheria, an app developer, master student, public speaker, and chocolate lover.

🍩Would you care about buying me a coffee? You can do it here: paypal.me/eleftheriabatsou but If you can't that's ok too!

🙏It would be nice to subscribe to my Youtube channel. It’s free and it helps to create more content.

Top comments (6)

diayan • Aug 24 '20

Lmao, the robot one and the astronaut really got me laughing. Can't imagine they both believed it.

For the guy who shamed you, don't mind him, he definitely failed to make a good connection from the start. And he could have at least tried to make it up, but apparently, he didn't. You are not a bad person so you have nothing to worry about.