On being mistaken for an old woman and my right to enjoy fanfiction
I get out of bed and put my long brown hair into a messy bun. “Hurry out!”, my mom’s voice calls from downstairs, impatient. I check how I look in the mirror first: black high-top Converse, ripped black skinny jeans, and a black t-shirt with the logo of my favorite band in the whole wide world, My Chemical Romance. Eyeliner and just a bit of mascara framing my beautiful greyish-purplish eyes. There is a knock on the door now. “Coming, mom!”, I shout, getting frustrated. I rush to the door to open it. On the other side: not my mom, but a pale man with long raven hair, fringe swooped to one side, and piercing greenish-grayish-blueish eyes. “W-what?” I blush deeply. “I’m sorry, honey”, my mom yells again. “Pack your things. I had to sell you to pay off our debts.” My mom sold me to Gerard Way? (1)
*
When I was eighteen, a friend sent me a post on my hometown’s unofficially-official spotted Instagram page(2), saying that he thinks that might be me in the picture. seen today. does anyone know her Instagram? anon pls, the caption read. It was a photo taken from across a wide main street, on a dreary and damp November day. The figure itself was extremely low-res: a bit hunched under the rain and wind, wearing a long black skirt and an over-the-shoulder messenger bag, but that was all you could reasonably make out. And sure enough, the figure was me. With a rising feeling of vague dread, I opened the comments to quite some traction (as far as small-town-creeper pages go, at least). Unsurprisingly, not a single person had been able to recognize me: I was not so sure myself at first, but the bag was my bag, and the skirt was then probably my skirt, and I had been on my way to class that day. The general public did, however, think this was a picture of an old woman, submitted as a joke or as some kind of perverse confession to GILF-dom. This, of course, gave them free reign not only to laugh at the original poster’s gerontophilia, but also to mock this poor, unsuspecting three-pixel grandma – who was not a grandma at all and was, in fact, me, caught in a bad picture at a bad time and posted to an account I didn’t even follow. I forwarded the post to all of my friends, I even showed it to my mom, and we all had a nice laugh about it. Then I spent the whole night scrolling through the page, refreshing the comments, and feeling bad about myself.
The ‘scrutiny’ I experienced following this Instagram post wasn’t even aimed at me – it was aimed at the person who had taken the photo, and at this lady who didn’t exist and barely even resembled me in the first place. The original poster might not have even thought that either of us would get made fun of for it (I have to say it, even if this is giving them major benefit of the doubt). Rather than consciously submitting something derogatory, it is possible that they were simply engaging in a (troublingly) common practice of snapping pics of strangers whose number you’re too scared to ask for – which summed up the rest of the account’s posting history. It’s not like the post went viral either – some twenty comments from people likely years younger than me made over the course of a day or two, and the post swiftly faded into obscurity, sunken in the swamp of other blurry pictures taken sneakily from afar, sometimes at odd hours of the night in desolate areas. Benefit of the doubt or not – some people are not nearly as lucky as I am (3).
Nonetheless, for long after, I paid special attention to how I appeared in public. This feeling dug its nails into aspects of my life far beyond my online image and bled into my real world. No one even had to post me anymore: I wondered, more than ever, about all the things that others thought of me which were too vile to share in person – about the way I dressed, of course, but also about things that could not be captured in the photo: the way I walked, the way I laughed, and the way I talked about the things I cared about. More broadly, I thought about the vastness of the Internet, the hundreds of pages that I have come across that specialize in posting cringe–pictures and videos of random people posted with the sole intention of evoking mockery from the audience–and the thousands I have not seen, floating out there in the unfeeling algorithmic cosmos. A tapestry of reposts and non-consensually recorded short clips to evoke laughter, to evoke pity, for someone not in on the joke, or for someone who sees it as no joke at all.
*
Contrary to what you might think, I did not, in fact, write two hundred words of MCR self-insert fanfiction just for the hell of it: we’ve now arrived at the part of the article where I am supposed to make the connection between my one millisecond of Internet infamy and self-surveillance in the digital age more explicit. In the process of writing this, I did, however, struggle a lot with putting into words the link between what happened to me and my growing discomfort with visibility in online spaces. Then I realized: none of the comments pertaining to what little of my appearance could be made out in that spotted post were anonymous. Not a single one! These were people with first-name-last-name-birth-date plastered on their profiles, often public accounts with pictures of their friends and dogs and barbecues and faces, and Instagram was like a nightmarish extension of my already suffocating hometown – its biting gossip breaching containment and worse yet, warmly extending an ‘in’ to strangers. Not just bullying, cyber-bullying, or whatever you would call what happened to me that fabled November day – existence itself had at some point evolved past in-person gossip, but also past leaving negative comments behind faceless, nameless accounts.
At the age of only twenty-one, I have already spent substantially more of my life curating some form of an Internet-self than not. In the countless hours I have dedicated to consuming and creating mountains of posts and attempting to adhere to the norms set on and by the platforms themselves, the Internet has grown increasingly incomprehensible to me. Par for the course for an increasingly incomprehensible reality – or is it precisely the fact that the Internet self and the whatever-my-other-self-is have become so enmeshed that which creates both incomprehensibilities? In my real life, when I am not actively being kidnapped by the OBJECTIVELY dashing lead singer of My Chemical Romance (if I am ever not), I am watching the Internet grow less and less anonymous in real-time.
Don’t get me wrong: the webspace has always been a hub for letting your freakiest thoughts run free. Blogs, forums, confession sites, finsta – if there is one thing people like to do, it is screaming into the void if it means hearing even the faintest shout back. However, plastering your face, full name, and university location for all of the Internet to enjoy – now that used to be something reserved for Facebook and LinkedIn users. The way we interact with the Internet and with each other on the Internet has fundamentally changed over time, and with that, the line between public and private has become as blurred as that between online and offline. I can open my Instagram or TikTok right now to a post labeled Top Five Sex Positions visibly liked by at least three of my classmates, a deeply traumatic and personal confession with nine thousand likes, and a clip of someone’s baby’s face in full view, all in succession. In interacting with the online space, whether I like it or not, thin-fingered algorithms delegate me as a voyeur, and it’s like we’ve all agreed to leave our curtains wide open and the lights on.
Public and private, public or private, private is public now, yet all the callousness of anonymity has remained. ur soooo beautiful in that dress ur baby is soooo funny and cute ive been married to a man for nine years but for you i might become a lesbian ur so old so young so embarrassing so decrepit i- this is not a good look for you, says first-name-last-name-three-hundred-fifty-followers. You guys remember how we all used to [trend from two years ago]? Street interview: can you name five countries starting with the letter N? What are you listening to and how would you rate this guy’s looks on a scale from 1 to 10? Remember when we all used to like this thing and not the other – here is photographic proof of me liking thing 1 before you dig it up yourself. Video of a stranger losing his temper. Stranger in the comments section explaining himself. Promoting his podcast, if he’s lucky. Tasteful meme which describes that I am both in the loop and quirky posted to the main story and a slightly less tasteful one for the close friends. The perverse enjoyment that comes from watching and the perverse enjoyment that comes from being watched.
As what we share about ourselves and the audience who views it grow and grow, the online self only becomes more demanding to manage – and the offline self starts struggling to catch up. Possibilities for feeling embarrassed of ourselves and the desires to prevent that from happening have become near endless, successfully turning the already terrifying prospect of constant surveillance into the yet scarier one of self-surveillance. Going on the Internet as a young teenager, I used to feel free to be an embarrassing child on embarrassing websites under the guise of my numerous indecipherable aliases. What’s more, I got to live out at least some of those years without having to worry about my infinitely more emo digital footprint ever becoming connected to my slightly less emo real-life self. I was still made fun of relentlessly for the way I dressed, the music I listened to, and the various YouTubers I shamelessly drew portraits of in art class (of course), but the luxury of doing so was nonetheless reserved for my lovely classmates whom I could then proceed to never cross paths with later in life. And if I was to be made fun of online, at least I’d always get to use the ol’ reliable You’re hiding behind a screen comeback – and have it actually be true.
At the expense of sounding like a Boomer (or like I am going to sell you a ten-day dopamine reset mindfulness retreat), in the age of the micromanaged and observed self, my need to reclaim my right not to be perceived – by others or by myself – grows by the day. My need to spend less time publicizing and laughing at less fortunate versions of myself before anyone else gets the chance to do the same. To do embarrassing things knowing that they will stay only in the safety of my curated networks and in the eyes of those physically there to witness me. To do embarrassing things at all, to be too young or too old, to look bad on bad days, to care about something a lot and in a deeply uncool way. To dress like an old woman without becoming the hottest topic in all four of my hometown’s high schools. To be spotted and to never find out about it. To toss my phone into the nearest canal, never to be seen again. To be sold to Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, too, of course – but you don’t need to know that about me.
My intention was to pay homage to the iconic fanfiction genre of Sold to/Kidnapped by One Direction, which I have hereby adapted to reflect my own deepest adolescent desires. In case you are unfamiliar with the ancient artform, I highly recommend checking it out on Wattpad.
2. In case you are still somehow blissfully ignorant, spotted accounts are pages that take (usually anonymous) submissions containing either the description of a person or a (non-consensually taken) picture of them, along with some general details about where and when the person was seen. Submissions are usually made with the intention of finding more information about the person – such as their name and their social media accounts.
3. I couldn’t help but wonder, also: what happens when someone is identified through a post like that? Has a fruitful friendship or relationship ever blossomed from overt yet somehow socially acceptable non-consensual picture-taking? Must make a hell of a first impression…
