{ Simping }

Brace yourselves for this one’s gonna get a bit cringeworthy. This story happened to me during my JC days, so when I was about 18. A life lesson and character building experience dat had no right being as embarrassing as it was.

One fine evening I was chilling about in my room, scrolling thru Instagram instead of doing my assignments, as any 18 year old student would. Scrolling…scrolling…notification…scrol…wait a minute, wat was dat…a DM? I opened it up and it’s a girl I didn’t even realise I was mutually following. The DM was a reply to my story (a pic of myself wearing a silly shirt. The focus was supposed to be on dat silly shirt, but I think I angled it wrong, too much emphasis on my face). It was a simple reply, a: 😍

Idk abt u, but when a girl replies to a pic of yourself wif dat, I think I have the right to feel like the sexiest goddamn man alive.

But I had to play it cool, replied wif a thumbs up emoji, showing acknowledgement, but also a sense of being too cool to be fazed by dis, u noe. Then the profile digging phase initiated. Who is she? Where is she from? Why is she messaging me? What does she like? How do I continue messaging her without being weird or creepy?

Based on my intensive research on her profile, probably way more effort than I did on any school assignment I did dat day, I confirmed dat she is the same age as me, literally just 5 days younger than me, and has a lot of common interests as me.

In a way I thought this was the universe’s way of providing me my soulmate. She was essentially perfect, what seemed to be a female version of myself. It’s destiny bringing us together. Next, the imagination phase, what hypothetical scenario could lead us to meeting in real life, fall in love, live happily ever after?

I quickly snapped back to reality and reminded myself of the task at hand. Not the schoolwork ofc, dat one’s long forgotten. But how do I naturally continue with our ‘conversation’ (dat one DM she sent lol) without it seeming forced? I had no experience in dis regard. So I tot the wisest move was to consult my buddy for some reason, who himself had equally as little experience.

He told me to just wait for her to reply again. Wise words my man. Ok I’ll take dat. Ok but wait a minute, if I wanted her to reply again, it means I gotta post some more Instagram stories, right?

Yea, so dats when I started wif the cringey-ass posting. Random-ass clips abt some random anime I vaguely noe abt, but I know she likes. Weird-ass photos of some Kpop related plushie or whatever, dat I noe she’s interested in. Even threw in some perfectly angled selfies of myself in the mix, knowing it worked the first time, so hoping the magic is still there.

This went on for a few weeks, maybe almost a month. It was around dis time dat I thought, perhaps my idea of us being soulmates wasn’t so correct. There was the fact dat she wasn’t replying to any of the stories I posted, no matter how relatable I tried making it for her. There was also the content she posted on her stories, in which I had completely no idea wat it was about or from.

But I ignored those signs. No, it was time to take it up a notch. U noe how Instagram has close friends, the green circle feature (which I’ve never used)? I don’t even know if they still have it, but yea I wanted to use dat, but just for her, so dat only she could see some extra-specific (which means extra-cringe) things I was gonna post.

Dis cringe went as far as subtle cosplaying as anime characters. A rlly alluring attempt at a Giorno Giovanna look was my trump card. Nothing against cosplayers, but when its done in a half ass-ed way just to get attention from a lady, it becomes a tad bit vomit-inducingly cringey. But wat did I know at the time, I was blinded by ‘love‘.

Ok but then the next problem arose – it’s abit too suspicious if I close friend-ed her, cos it’ll show dat I’m trying to suggest to her something. So I resorted to Plan B, a slightly less rational plan, dat I noe you’ve thought of doing before too. So I went and hid my story from every single one of my followers, except for her. I had abt 300+ at the time, so dat was absolutely time consuming, and looking back, makes me absolutely disappointed in myself. I was a grade-A simp, essentially.

None of dat worked. None of dat led to anything. A few weeks later she deleted her account. Thankfully I was not a reason for her decision to do so, and it was mostly some weirdos DMing her, and also the fact dat she wanted to focus on studies. Ok, as cringe as I was, at least I didn’t make her uncomfortable by DM-ing eh, I’ll take dat W.

Ok but I was pretty upset dat day, partly wif the universe, mostly wif myself. It was a bitter pill to swallow knowing hard work doesn’t always pay off. In my attempts to impress a lady I had lost time and just a lil bit of dignity.

But you know what, I’m glad I went thru dat. It directly re-taught me advice from my childhood hero I had forgotten, in which love that requires that person’s reciprocation, is not a true kind of love. I was not in love with her, I was in love with the idea of impressing her. The discontent dat I felt when she didn’t respond to my stories, proves dis false sense of love. This false perception of love happens to all of us (I like to tell myself), and am glad it happened to me while I was still young, so dat I won’t ever repeat it in the future 🤞

19.07.2025