آنفالو کردن

What it means

آنفالو کردن (unfollow-kardan) means to unfollow someone on Instagram, X, Telegram, or any social platform. It is the paired action of فالو کردن (follow-kardan, to follow), and Persian speakers treat it as a tiny social event. You do not silently slip away from a feed; you آنفالو می‌کنی, and the other person usually notices, and the question “چرا آنفالوم کردی؟” (chera unfollow-am kardi, why did you unfollow me) is a real one, asked at parties, in DMs, in awkward voice notes.

The verb is colloquial. Younger Iranians use it constantly; the form has been in active circulation since Instagram took over Iranian internet life around 2014.

Compound verb structure

آنفالو کردن is built from the English-rooted noun آنفالو (unfollow) plus the native Persian light verb کردن (kardan, to do). The interesting piece is the آن prefix: Persian has absorbed English “un-” by transliterating it as آن and treating the whole thing as one frozen noun before adding کردن. The pattern is productive enough that other verbs follow it (آنبلاک کردن, unblock-kardan; آنماتچ کردن, unmatch-kardan on dating apps).

• Present: من آنفالو می‌کنم (man unfollow mikonam), تو آنفالو می‌کنی (to unfollow mikoni), او آنفالو می‌کند (u unfollow mikonad)
• Past: من آنفالوش کردم (man unfollow-esh kardam, I unfollowed him/her)
• Subjunctive: که آنفالو کنم (ke unfollow konam)
• Negation: آنفالو نکردم (unfollow nakardam, I did not unfollow)

The object pronoun attaches directly to the noun (آنفالوش کردم, unfollow-esh kardam), which is the colloquial pattern for compound verbs with foreign-rooted nouns.

How to use it

chera unfollow-am kardi? chi shod?

Why did you unfollow me? What happened?

چرا آنفالوم کردی؟ چی شد؟

hame-ye un dokhtar-haye fashion-blogger ro unfollow kardam, hosele-shun ro nadashtam.

I unfollowed all those fashion-blogger girls, I had no patience for them.

همه‌ی اون دخترهای فشن‌بلاگر رو آنفالو کردم، حوصله‌شون رو نداشتم.

The social weight

An unfollow on Iranian Instagram is read. People keep track. Friends who broke up unfollow each other within the hour. Cousins who fought at a wedding unfollow each other and the family group chat lights up. Influencers with 200K followers watch the counter and know when something they posted lost them a thousand people overnight. The act is not invisible the way it is in some markets, partly because the Iranian feed is smaller and tighter, partly because Instagram is the dominant social space and the stakes per follow are higher.

In our voice

If you are learning Persian and you want to thin your feed of accounts that no longer fit, you can آنفالو کردن freely, the way you would in English. Just know that if you do it to an Iranian friend, they will probably see it, and it will mean something. The polite alternative is میوت کردن (mute-kardan), which keeps the follow intact while hiding the posts.

References

• Dehkhoda, فالو
• Vajehyab, آنفالو