When 17-year-old Aarav quietly opens his second Instagram account late at night, it’s not for likes or fashion promos—it’s his digital sanctuary, his finsta. The term “finsta,” a blend of fake and Instagram, originally described parody or second accounts used for close friends. But for queer Indian teens, it has morphed into something far deeper: a secret virtual almari (wardrobe) where they try on identities safely, post crush-confessions, and whisper their true selves in code-words, far from parental eyes and “real name” followers. Aarav confesses to Gaysi Family: “Queer posts? Maybe a story about my latest crush? … but only to Close Friends. Of course I made a finsta for all that.”
In India, the culture around finstas is layered with familia (family) expectations, neighbourhood gossip, and school corridors where cliché binaries still dominate. For queer teens, the main ‘gram’ account—the one their aunties (chachi), neighbours, cousins all follow—is a fenced zone of heteronormative posts: selfies, school trophies, cousin weddings, and search-engine cleared browsers. On their finsta, labeled often with a pseudonym, they share a selfie in lipstick, a story tag like “had a crush on him again”, memes with the pride flag hidden in plain sight, and the relief of a block button used mercilessly. One contributor to Gaysi described it as “my digital closet”.
This dual-account strategy is very much about visibility with surgical precision—the term “closet” might feel old, but the concept remains: queer teens in India hide their orientation even in spaces of visibility. The online realm offers both respite and risk. A recent feature in Scroll described how queer youth in India grew up discovering their identities through blogs, Google quizzes and social platforms—and yet the same platforms carry threats of hate, doxxing and cyberbullying. A 16-year-old in Madhya Pradesh died by suicide after a viral reel of him in a saree triggered sustained abuse online, documented by The Daily Beast.
It’s this contradiction—online safety vs danger—that makes the finsta so culturally significant. In Hindi we might say it’s a kind of doosra chehra (second face), a place you let your guard down. For teens like Aarav, it’s where they explore pronouns, experiment with filters, use sand-coded jokes about rainbow flags, maybe tag a friend who also has a “hidden” account. The main account remains sasural approved and bland; the finsta is where they are asli (real).
Languages matter here too. Teens might call the “main” account their public profile, and the finsta their chhupa profile (hidden profile). They may avoid following visible queer influencers on their main, but on the finsta hit “Follow” on a creator with a rainbow-nick and laugh at jokes about saari (sari) and stubble-shame. They live in a cultural moment where Gen Z in India are declaring queerness younger. One survey found more teens openly identifying as gay, bi or trans at age 13-15, and families beginning to cautiously support them.
But there’s a caveat: this digital safe-space is brittle. Algorithms “suggest” mutuals who might out you, friends may screenshot, and platform moderation fails queer users spectacularly. The Gaysi piece notes how some teens post “homophobic stories just to give their family some somber relief.” In India, the reports of online abuse are rising—cyberbullying up 25 % in one year, and suicide risk sharply elevated for queer youth.
So the finsta’s power is ambivalent. It offers a place to breathe, to reflect, to connect with a tiny circle of “close friends only” — sirf kareebi dost — but it also reinforces the need to hide. It is both survival and divorce. For the queer Indian teen, it’s a space where they whisper “haan, I am bi / gay / trans” in a story that disappears after 24 hours, where they drop a subtle pride-emoji, and where they draft their life beyond the binary of mandir-mandap (temple-marriage) that may still await them offline.
In the larger spectrum of Indian social media culture, the finsta phenomenon reveals something urgent: we’re witnessing the emergence of an underground queer social architecture. It is digital, discreet, yet deliberate. And for those teens who feel trapped between ghar (home) and internet, it may just be the nearest thing to freedom they get right now.
Oh, my dazzling darlings, let Spicy Auntie tell you something: Indian queer teens are not just survivors—they’re strategic geniuses, digital warriors, and full-blown partisans of Pride. You think the French Resistance was clever? Try navigating school corridors full of moral policing, WhatsApp family groups bursting with unsolicited sanskari (traditional) wisdom, and an internet eager to betray your secrets. And yet these kids—OUR kids—are building entire underground kingdoms out of emojis, private stories, and secret Finstas that would make any intelligence agency sweat.
I mean, do you see what they’re doing? They’re crafting new dialects, queer-coded slang, subtle memes, inside jokes, and linguistic winks so sophisticated you need a decoder ring just to keep up. A rainbow hidden in a sunset reel. A “close friends only” green circle that’s basically a clandestine clubhouse. A throwaway username that means everything to the five people who understand. This is not hiding. This is strategy. This is survival artistry. This is brilliance.
But let Auntie be honest—my heart aches. Because I know why these codes exist. I know why that second account has to be locked tighter than a Bollywood family’s secrets. I know why a teenage boy has to post a fake homophobic meme on his “main” just to keep the aunties calm. I know why a girl in a small town uses a cartoon avatar instead of her face. I know why a trans teen finds comfort in a disappearing 24-hour story instead of coming out in her own home.
It’s not because they are afraid. It’s because the world around them is still learning how to love them properly.
These queer teens are brilliant, yes—but they shouldn’t have to be spies in their own lives. Their double identities, their coded languages, their hidden accounts—they are masterpieces of resistance. But they are also reminders that the battle is not over, that the closet has simply moved online, that the digital age has created new ways to hide and new ways to be hunted.
And yet, as every partisan knows, in a war of liberation, every tactic is allowed. Every whisper counts. Every safe space matters. And every coded emoji is a small, bright explosion of courage.
So Auntie bows to these young rebels. Keep your finstas, babies. Keep your codes, your circles, your secret languages. One day you won’t need them. But until that day comes—fight smart, stay fierce, and remember: Pride was always a revolution, and you are its newest, brightest soldiers.